Raising a Glass

As of around 11:30 am yesterday, relief came texting through in a note from Todd advising that the final counter offer on the house was accepted.

It’s done.

After a week or so of dickering back and forth, a mutually acceptable agreement has been reached. We are to be out as of February 1st, and this portion of my life will be at a close.

I was going to type “will be mercifully closed,” but that would be both unfair and unkind. Todd and I have had a spectacular ten years together and I’m sad, maybe a bit wrecked, to see the end of it. The merciful part is only in that the ending, now that it has come, is quick. Breaking up is hard to do, even for the right reasons. Hell, I think that makes it harder. Plus, there were concerns that selling the house would be a dragged out process. If the final counter offer hadn’t been accepted we would be forced to wait even longer, starting from scratch when we had already made arrangements to be out at a certain date. We both want to move on.

But no worries now. All engines are go. We are cleared for take off.

And I’m excited, truth be told. While the technical aspects of getting all my stuff out of here before February 1st will be a challenge, I always did like a good move. Gets the blood pumping while you focus on the task. Gets you looking at all your junks and treasures again, giving you a chance to redefine and rebuild yourself. I will out of necessity have to put on my space economizing hat, as the apartment is much smaller than the current sprawl I’m used to. But if there was one thing I got out of my summers away is that I don’t need, or even like, a lot of space. Concise, functional, and whimsical — that’s what it will be.

So I opened up a bottle of wine last night and toasted to the selling of the house and to the New Year ahead.

And to writing.

It may be a skoosh early for a retrospective of the year, but why not?

2009, up until about the beginning of November, was the best year I’ve had as far as my writing is concerned. I’ve connected with a group of writers who have become very important to me. I wrote more words this year then ever before. I finished three short stories. (“Drafts only!” my inner critic shouts from the back of the room.) I finished my second novel. (“Only a draft!!” she squeals again before I lob a pillow at her.) I even submitted a short story for publication. (“Edited, I might add,” I say to the critic, who is giving me the silent treatment.)

But most importantly, I see the path ahead. Writing isn’t a magical process, something impossible or something other people do. It only took twenty years, but now I see it for what it is. Like cooking, writing is one part science and one part art. And I can do science. I can do art.

I can do this.

Here’s to 2010. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas. May you find yourself at peace, surrounded by family and friends. And may the New Year be as fantastic as you make it to be!

Timelines

We have a tentative sale for the house. Things can always change and if conditions are not met the house will not be sold, but right now, we have an offer, we have accepted, and we have a date to work towards.

February 1st, 2010.

It’s both too far away and too close. So much to do. Not sure if we will keep showing the house during this next week or so. We might be. I don’t know. I think we talked about it but it’s such a blur right now. Everything’s all running together.

I’m supposed to be excited.

Yeah. About that.

I have about a month and a half. Not sure how things will work on first of February. We have to be out, we have to be settled, but will I have the apartment ready? Nothing will be ready. Living out of boxes labeled with black marker. Missing simple, stupid things, like hair ties and toothpaste and slipper socks. Making do with what’s at hand, like you’re trying out for the poor man’s MacGyver. Learning all the new ticks of a new apartment, the sounds of the pipes, the texture of the floor, the angles and the places where your elbow will bounce and your toe will stub.

The cat will be interesting. He’s been to the place where my apartment is, but not the apartment itself. Not sure how he’s going to handle things. He may be lonely. (Metaphor much?) I’ve toyed with the idea of another cat, but not right away. There is a cat upstairs that may provide all the extra entertainment he can handle.

Not that any of this has anything to do with writing.

Last night was somewhat productive. I’ve discovered that doing prep work away from home is a little challenging, because invariably I don’t have the ability to lug around the books I want to use while I’m world building. Still, I managed to free-write what I remember of the first six chapters or so. (Why is it always six chapters?) I haven’t yet re-started the actual draft. Well, except for the first line, “She ran.” Bit of a cheat, really, but at least it’s a start.

I have the weekend ahead of me. Turning inward, working on my own little projects and the novel will be one of them.

Still looking for some joie de vive, though. If you have any to spare . . .

Not Now, Not Yet, Soon

Today I got good news.

Nothing writing-related, mind you. Life-related. The sort of news that’s supposed to make you kick off your shoes, dance a jig and then scream at the world, “Take that! I’m still here, bitches!”

But it wasn’t. At least not for me. Relief, mostly, but soured with a drop of doubt. I never get quite clear and free from this sort of thing. There are always more tests in another year’s time. The standard ultrasounds, chest x-rays, seasonal blood work requisitions, and now a bone density test thrown in there to make sure the endoskeleton doesn’t get any ideas about going soft. It’s always another year. For followups that were supposed to last only five years after surgery, we’re now in year seven, and I keep wondering if I will ever get to walk away from this and be told, “Your clean. Your family doctor can take it from here.”

I’m a subscriber to my own health, chronically behind, asking the company for a promise-to-pay, an extension, that just keeps getting renewed and renewed, one year at a time. I never get ahead, and that deadline is always looming.

Someone suggested that it must give me a different perspective, a zest for life, that sort of thing. It doesn’t. There’s never a final answer; the one you do get flickers between “not now” and “not yet” depending on your point of view. It’s a gloomy thing, a weight that’s heavy. I normally try my best to not focus on it but sometimes it doesn’t give me the choice, and today was one of those days. Even after the good (and yet “not now”) news. I went to work late because of the appointment and ended up leaving early. If I’d stayed on the phones, if I’d had to listen to just one asshole, I’d have lost it.

The sleep helped. I’m clear-headed. I’m calm. I’m just not bouncing around yet.

I keep waiting to be joyous about the results, but I don’t think it’s coming.

Oh, well. Gotta make your own joy, right?

No, no, no . . .

No words typed in.

No work done on the short story.

No progress on the manuscript build.

I did journal today – extensively. And it lulled me into a false sense of productivity. Still, it needed to get out and it couldn’t be done here and I feel a little better in that regard. It is as I feared, though – I like Tales of Vesperia. The graphics are so beautiful. It really feels like you are playing through an animated movie. I like it, which means it has to go. This afternoon, after my journaling and my uncharacteristic bout of house work (or is that characteristic procrastination?), I ended up playing for several hours. As usual, it’s left me feeling drained and vaguely unhappy both because I wasted the afternoon and because I’m not playing it now. Yes, yes, it must go, it must be excised from the house like a rogue poltergeist before the cat starts hissing, the cutlery starts flying and my head starts twisting backwards.

And the dog, that damned beautiful, goofy dog. She broke her back yard leash and I, having left her out there while I ate dinner, ended up running around the neighborhood in lounge-wear, glasses and a messy pony tail all in a panic while I searched for her. Silly thing had her legs in the air and her belly being rubbed a few houses up the road where the neighbors had seen her and brought her inside their fenced yard. They were just calling me as I came up the street. A panic attack and rawhide treat later, Ginger now waits for Todd to come home while I hope and pray I actually sleep tonight.

Two days until the Hypergraphics meeting.

Five days until Todd and I scoot off to Niagara for a couple of days (which reminds me, I need to make sure we have appropriate Sitters for the Critters.)

Fifty-six days until World Con. My brain still hasn’t entirely wrapped around that bit of cosmic, literary joy.

Small Changes

Today wasn’t spent writing.

But I don’t mind so much. Today was pleasant. Started the day with a load of laundry and taking the dog for a walk under dark skies being whisked away by the early wind, then some puttering before I dived head first into the book I was reading, Magic Study by Maria Snyder. After nibbles of leftovers for lunch, I sat and polished the book off like the double-chocolate romantic-fantasy cake that it is. I have to resist the urge to run out and buy the next book – my to-read book pile is at 68 books! I relented to my inner book demon by picking up The Living Dead, a zombie anthology with stories by Stephen King, Joe Hill and George R.R. Martin, forsaking my pact to not buy another piece of fiction until after I had brought the to-read pile to half its size, under the grounds that it would be research towards my recent forays into fictional zombie-land.

I can talk my way around any book purchase.

What other non-writing yet tangentially related activities were on tap for today? I re-purposed one of those free-standing file holders that I had the habit of collecting over the years. They always start out so shiny, promising increased productivity and cleanliness. Just shove it in here, it beckons with its labeled folders. Look how neat and tidy! But after a few months the poor things look they’ve been on a paper diet the equivalent of beer and ding-dongs, so bloated and unwieldy that you just shove it into a corner and make a note to come back to it one afternoon. What once held the promise of productivity has now become an unwelcome chore even more hated than picking up the dog shit in the back yard.

Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen again.

I kept three of the former folder labels: “To Read”, “To File”, and “To Pass On”. These have now become the places for magazines like Writers Digest and Locus, scraps of paper that I’ve written ideas or story fragments that need to be typed up and given a permanent home, and things that I need to return to other people. Two new categories were added: “To Edit” for my work and “To Crit” for the work of others.

While I haven’t been writing too much, I have been critiquing for one of the other Hypergraphic members, and I’ve found it terribly fun and useful. Hopefully I’ve been helpful. He has made some changes to the drafts, several short-shorts for a group project he’s working on, based on some of the things I pointed out. But that’s not the fun or useful part for me. By actively critiquing his work, it’s put me into a totally different head space, more of a puzzled engineer given an assembly of parts trying to decipher the point of the device and make suggestions on how to make it run more smoothly. After critiquing some of his pieces, I turned this new mind-creature towards one of my zombie short stories and gleefully started making changes.

It makes me really, really wish I hadn’t let my as-of-yet-never-used subscription to the Online Writers Workshop lapse.

Then again, maybe its because a person I know face-to-face asked me to read and comment on it made the difference between passively wanting to do it and actually buckling down to do it. I think I will continue doing it with Hypergraphic members for a while yet, really whet my appetite. Besides, I’ve blown my spending allowance for the next two months so I can’t really afford it. Yet.

The upside is that I’m still a lurker on the OWW Message List. I’ve never, until now, been able to keep up with the output of the list. Even trying to manage it on a separate mail program like Thunderbird didn’t help. It finally occurred to me what the problem was – I couldn’t read them on the iPhone. Not because I couldn’t get the email (I could and did), but because the format of the (damnable) Yahoo message board lists always sticks this spammy sidebar in every email message, and in my mail program on the iPhone it reduces the content down to teeny-tiny type that I have to pinch and zoom to read. Doesn’t sound like much of a hassle but it stops me from browsing and reading the mail one handed. I switched format to send it old school, so while it now looks like ass in Thunderbird, on my iPhone it’s legible and much more likely to be read.

I had intended to post this earlier, but my evening was hijacked by a bit of good news. My contacts, which had been bothering me the last several weeks, appear to have been the wrong prescription. My right eye has an astigmatism and while contacts can be made to take this into account, the tilt necessary for my prescription was backwards. After weeks of buggy eyes and paranoia, I went back to the optometrist and she spotted it right away. Tonight she called back to say she had samples in and because our schedules wouldn’t match again until next week Todd and I drove in tonight. Long story shortened too late, I have a corrected pair and a replacement box has been ordered. As we drove home tonight I could see, without strain, every young leaf and slender branch silhouetted against the purpling dusk. You never realize how hard you’ve had to work at something until it, at last, comes without effort.

Will writing every be like that, I wonder?

Sleeping Puppy

Well, she was sleeping. As Jack moved towards her food bowl, she got up to see what he was up to. Now she’s sprawled in from of them, just to keep an eye on ‘em.

Not too many entries lately, as I’ve been busy with work, doing minor things around the house, and with Ginger.

We’ve laid some carpet down in the bedroom, scrap from his parents’ remodeling that was still very nice but not matching their new scheme. It’s schooshy and warm and lovely, and finishes off the room really nicely. We also put together that small hutch that we’re using for a nicer sort of tv stand for the bedroom. We slept on the pull-out bed for three nights while the bedroom was in a mess, and I was happy to get back to our bed.

My office has all been moved around, and after a bit of time it’s starting to feel downright cozy and useful. Of course, I already have a messy bit that I need to set right. I might go in there tonight, depending.

I’ve had two days off in a row, one of which with Todd (this past Sunday). I’m feeling very good, relaxed and content. That might all change tomorrow, as I head back to work. We have a small Ladies’ Closing BBQ (with 10 oz steak, which I’m sure means I’ll hear endless refrains of, ‘Oh, do you have something smaller?’ and ‘can you cut that in half?’) tomorrow, then Men’s Night on Wednesday sans Anita, and then three days until I get to enjoy another Sunday with Todd again!

Watching Coronation Street. *sweethappyglee* I love this damn show so much. Hee! With the CBC lockout I’m getting double dosage of it every day. With any luck, it will be over soon, so I don’t get inundated with TV when all the new shows start up. The Sunita/Dev/Maya story seems to be done. I missed a half-hour, so I don’t know if Maya died or not, and they haven’t been on in three eppies now. The Shelly/Charlie storyline has been horrible and good at the same time – great to watch. Ashley/Claire is sweet, but not saccarine. Kevin/Sally/kids has been good, too. Katy/Martin is just annoying. It was interesting at first, but that relationship is doomed – the character of Katy is too juvenile to make it last, IMO. I wish someone at work watched it, so we could talk about it. *glee*

Todd’s out with the pup for a good long walk. She was funny this morning, after Todd gave her this dental chew bone that we discovered afterwards wasn’t meant for puppies. After her weirdness and crying this morning, followed by a huge green poop, it was obvious something was up. No more dental bones!

Mmm … time to make some popcorn, methinks! I made chili tonight, no recipe, with black and kidney beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, onions, beef and beer! I even bought some jalepeno jack cheese to go on top. Plus, lots of leftovers for Todd to eat. I wish he would get a little more creative with his eating. He’s at least getting more adventurous with pastas, but a man can’t live on pasta and pizza pops alone!

I am also a new slave to my Ipod Mini – to the point where I regret getting to use the car because it means I can’t listen to the Pod for my bus ride into work.

Jagged Little … Pills

I’m on the second day of two days off, and I have a list of things to do.

We picked up a moveable kitchen cart, which is fantastic, since moving my old dinner table into the living room to make a new safe area for the cat food means I have really no space to do any prep-cooking in the kitchen. That I’m going to try and assemble today while Ginger takes some crate time.

I’m also going to go through my expanding file-folder. It sits on top of my filing cabinet, and junk sort of all ends up in it instead of being filed away. Plus there is a bend I have to hammer out of the top shelf. Tonight I’m whipping up the dumplings I was supposed to make yesterday but didn’t because the filling hadn’t defrosted enough.

If I have enough time, or, like, the somehow time moves backwards and I find myself with an extra day, I’m going to start tackling a re-org of my kitchen. Yeah, right.

On a news note: The National had a feature about a ‘new’ use for birth control, essentially suppressing periods for a pre-determined about of time. You had the two camps on the news, those who say it’s offering women a choice, and those who think that it’s stripping away something natural and part of womanhood.

Quite frankly, in an era where we already mess with fertility by choice, and monkey with menopause to treat symtoms of discomfort, why would modifying our periods be any different? It is annoying, it is discomfort, it is messy. I never had this glorious, teary-eyed “I am a woman!!!!” moment when I had my first period. It was more of an, “Ah, dang!” moment. (Not an ‘oh shit’ or ‘oh damn’, since I was only 11.) They were irregular, disruptive, and sometimes quite painful. I have always sworn up and down that if I ever had the option I would stop having them altogether. In the feature, they showed that this particular use of the drug was packaged to give a woman only four periods over the course of a year. They had a doctor talking about the general use of suppression who suppressed her own periods for over 8 years.

Sounds wonderful to me! Not sure if it’s available in Canada, but if it is, I wonder if my doctor would go for it.

Also, received a wedding invitation from my ex-fiancee and his girlfriend, a woman who was once very close to me. We’re not close anymore. I can count on my one hand the number of times I’ve spoken to them in the last several years, and they were chance meetings. I’m … not really sure what to think of it. I wish them the best.

All finished!

After some trickery with front and back page printing, I’ve just printed out 233 pages worth of journal entries. That was so, so, so much better than hand-formating each entry. And as long as I keep the link in my journal, I can go back, create another document, and print from where I left off.

Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy!

One of the things that I didn’t talk about here on the journal, or in my paper one, which I do scribble in occasionally, was about Canada Day. I should, though I wanted to avoid whining about what happened immediately.

Canada Day I had off, which was very cool. Top of my list of things to do that day was to head to the Canada Day celebrations at the Sudbury Arena. While there would be the expected Blowing Up Of Things That Go Boom ™ at night, during the day, the city gets together for a big cross-cultural food event! It’s great, really – different nationalities highlight the foods of their homeland/culture for a nominal price. I sampled some great samosas, tried taboulleh, had a yummy chicken curry with this incredible toasted coconut, and a six-pack of sushi (though I had pointed at the gyoza and was given the wrong package). There were long line-ups at the usual suspects: Italian and Ukrainian. Come on, people! You’ve had lasagna and perogies a million times. Branch out a little!

Anyways, while eating my tabouleh, and sitting with Todd in the bleachers, a guy from my past approached me. Mike. Long-time readers (who might care, or might not) may remember him from my time at cooking school. Bit of a dick, in a harmless, Drizzt-fanboi, geek-who-married, whiny-bitch sort of way. He was the one that had initiated the competition between myself and Suzanne over top marks. I worked with him at Pat & Marios, and in printing out my journal, recall vague feelings of bitterness at the fact that he was able to work on the line a few nights, while I was stuck back in prep and back-line appetizers. I chalk that up mostly because I’m a girl, and frankly it was all boys on the line, and always would be. He came up to me and starting chatting, all the while I was just wishing him away so I could eat my vinegary taboulleh.

He wanted to catch up on the other student gossip. He talked a lot about Suzanne, and how while they worked together at the Horse Track buffet restaurant in town, she was good for the first two weeks, and then morphed into a control-freak bitch. And that even Colette, whom Suzanne constantly sings praises for, was exasperated by her behavior, even asking Mike why he recommended her. It’s nice to hear the other side to the story – Suzanne would go on and on about what an idiot he was. Then about Sherri, who is still at Montanas (a terrible local restaurant) doing management stuff but is now on maternity leave.

Then he asks, “How are you on getting your book signed off?” He’s got that head-bobble of superiority coming on. I tell him, “Just meat and fish portioning left. Going to be heading to a butcher to do the former when work dies down a bit, and then bring in some fish for one-on-ones with my chef.”

“I got my Red Seal a few months ago. Boss signed off the rest of my book for me. I passed it first time with a 76% and the Ministry guy even came to work to congratulate me.”

The Boss, in this case, as far as I know, has no Chef papers. He cooks, yeah, but has no qualifications that I am aware of, like most of the road-houses in town. I know for a fact that while they do a hip on Sunday brunches, every other piece of meat comes there cryovac’ed. So where he got his training on portioning meat or fish, I dunno. But I guess for some it doesn’t matter.

He just came over to brag. That’s all. So. Infuriating. At the time, at least. I’m in a better place about it now. Even when I was talking about it at work, John was a little horrified. “He’d be useless in a real kitchen, like a hotel.” “I know,” I replied.

In thinking on the kinds of work we do, though, I’m glad I didn’t stay at P&Ms. It is a road house. At the Idyie, I get to invent new specials, be in charge of signature dishes, help with ordering, help with directing the new staff, and actually learning the real stuff. I cut all the steaks off of a single striploin last Wednesday for men’s night, and they were bang-on. I’m going to go to a butcher and learn about meat from a professional. I’m going to spend time with John cleaning and portioning fish until I get it right. My book will be signed off with meaning behind it, not back-scratching.

So, normally a day when I get sort of teary-eyed when I look at how Canada celebrates its nationhood, with people from all backgrounds coming together to share what they love, got squashed on by this guy coming over to brag about, basically, cheating. Guh. I ended up leaving early, so I didn’t even get a chance to see all the booths, or any of the dancing. I shouldn’t have let it bother me, but I sometimes feel powerless to do anything to stop it. John suggested meditation.

Sexy!

I have one hell of a sexy lasagne sitting on my stovetop. Made from scratch, all of it, from the bolognese to the bechamel to the noodles.

The bolognese was rich and hearty, and I used thyme I’ve grown myself.

The bechamel was as smooth as silk, night and day different from the last time at home.

The noodles came together so easy and so nice, and they rolled out perfectly.

I even got fancy, and baked off a loaf of from-scratch bread that I’ll be taking with the lasagne over to some friends of ours for a night of food, drink, Justice League Unlimited, and party games. Woot!

I was going to make a strawberry-rhubarb crumble pie, but while I have lovely organic strawberries in the fridge, my crop of rhubarb out back is a pretty thin lot. What started out growing like gangbusters have slowed to a spindly crawl thanks to the total lack of rain. Oh well. I have been working since 9:00 am this morning, so I suppose I deserve a break. It went very smoothly, and while it took a little time, it was faster than the last time I assembled the thing, since I made the sauces this morning to boot.

Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy.

Hanging Out & House Cleaning

I’m in the middle of trying to figure out our new prep lists for work, and where it’s all going in our fridges. I question whether or not I should be doing this on my own time (I’m off today, after all), but if I don’t do it, it will never, EVER be done. My plan is to slip the sheets into sheet condoms (those see-through sheet holders for binders) and then take some packing tape and afixing it to each respective frdge. This way they have a list, and it will be easier for the new people to find things that they need. My first idea was to laminate the sheets, but this way if we make any changes (and I pray to the Kitchen Gods that we will), we won’t have to toss out the originals, just replace with new sheets.

I also took the car this morning, after dropping Todd off, and tooled around all morning doing my own things. I went to the grocery store, to the gourmet food shop (lots of imports from Holland), Canadian Tire (was going to buy some new pots, but decided I should check to see what pots I still have for transplating before I buy too many, or even not enough), went to the library and came back with oodles of books to read, and visited my mum, who was pleased to have me drive up by myself to her place.

Tonight we’re going over to Lee and Shelly’s for BBQ and movie-watching, and then it’s back to work for the weekend. We have a large wedding for tomorrow, and our oven, the Garland, is completely broken. They are trying to get a part purolated in for today so we can get it fixed before then. Finger’s crossed.

Now, off to do some reading!