Recovery

The proposal is done. Our contracts manager sent it out yesterday afternoon. My sinus infection is (slowly) clearing up; I have a mild but persistent sore throat, but the headache is largely gone. There are a couple of documents due out today; I'm in the office to get those out the door and then I'm going home.

I'll work on the story idea I had last night, for a submission call that's due in two weeks. (Though it's possible that if I'm mostly done by that point, I can send in a precis and get an extension.) I'm meeting a friend for lunch, and we'll take it slow and easy. It's Friday, so we'll do dinner with the Hedge and hang out at their place until late.

Matt has his monthly D&D game tomorrow, which means he'll get up with the kids tomorrow morning. I'm going to sleep as late as humanly possible, and then I'll get up and do stuff. Not sure what stuff -- aside from Matt's game, there isn't anything on our calendar. Maybe we'll resume shopping for a new fridge. Maybe I'll make a run down to Sam's Club. Maybe I'll go to Bath and Body Works and buy more good-smelly stuff that I don't actually need. Maybe we'll take the kids to see The Lorax. Whatever. Since Matt's gaming, I'll probably take the kids over to the Hedge so they have someone to play with and don't drive me bonkers. (Unless the Hedge has other plans, in which case I will resort to the clever combination of bribery, guilt, and shouting that so characterizes my parenting style.)

Sunday morning I'll get up with the kids and we'll do the usual chores and stuff. See my list of "maybe"s from the previous paragraph; they all still apply.

And Monday? I'm not going to work on Monday, either. So there.

Sleepshod

I woke up yesterday morning and thought, "Huh, my throat's a little sore."

Then I swallowed and I thought, "Oh, shit, it's a LOT sore. I do not have time to have strep right now!"

Luckily, when I found a flashlight and look a look in my throat, I didn't see any white patches. Just raw red. Yay, weather changes and allergies, I guess.

But by mid-afternoon, I had a headache. And by dinnertime, it had become that sort of all-over body ache that I usually get with a fever, except I didn't feel feverish.

Which could only mean one thing: sinus infection.

Joy.

So I took two Advil, threw down a slug of Tylenol Cold and Sinus (nighttime), and took an Allegra for good measure, and took myself off to bed just a smidge past nine, the very earliest I could manage it after getting the kids to bed and taking a shower.

When the alarm went off this morning... and then the snooze alarm... twice... and I finally dragged myself upright, I thought, "Oh, good. Throat's not nearly so sore today. But I could easily sleep for another three or four hours."

Which says to me one of two things:

1) Either I have a cold and my body would really like me to go back to bed and drink fluids and get some rest; or
2) I've been short on sleep and running on adrenaline for weeks (if not months) and the extra two hours of sleep I got last night was just enough to make my system realize how tired it actually is.

Or, you know, some combination of the above.

In any case, it seems I need to get some more sleep, and soon. (HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!)

Too Long

It's been too long since I last wrote. Sorry about that, gang.

Proposals suck in my brain and make me incapable of life function, it seems sometimes. And the Daylight Savings switch happened this past weekend, so my brain is still refusing to function in line with that, too. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for about three days.

Things are starting to come together with the proposal now, though -- we're still editing, but all the sections have been written and vetted and approved as compliant. It's just a question now of squeezing out the unnecessary stuff so we can fit it all in under the mandated page-count. (This is where college turns out to have been useful -- all that time spent playing with the formatting on my papers so they would fit the pagecount requirement has, it turns out, given me valuable skills.)

***

Penny's diabetes has been kicking our asses lately. Saturday night, she accidentally got Humalog instead of Lantus at bedtime, which meant Matt stayed up until after 1 AM checking her sugars and chasing a viciously persistent low... and then we spent all day Sunday correcting the high from lack of basal insulin. To make matters worse, she went to a friend's birthday party Sunday afternoon and had not only cake, but pizza, that bane of diabetics everywhere.

So when the school nurse called me at lunch yesterday to tell me she was crazy high, I wasn't that surprised... but when the nurse told me she was also showing moderate ketones, I freaked out. Spilling ketones is bad. We're supposed to call the endocrinologist's emergency number when she's at moderate or higher levels. But, pizza, I thought, and told the nurse to correct generously and recheck her in two hours to make sure it was taking hold.

I spent the next two hours on pins and needles. Was I going to have to leave work early to pick my daughter up from school and take her to the hospital?

When the nurse called back, the bad news was that her sugars were pretty much the same as before. Though Penny reacts to Humalog pretty late in its 4-hour window, and she'd eaten lunch in there, so for her to have remained at a stable level wasn't that bad. But the good news was that she was back to being negative for ketones. No emergency calls or hospital trips for us. Whew.

Once I'd started to calm down, I realized: I don't think she ever got her shot for breakfast. Like, at all. I'd started to do the math, but whe'd been waffling over what kind of yogurt she wanted, so I'd walked away to do something else while she finished deciding, and I think I got distracted and never went back to it. Mea culpa. I won't even get into how that made me feel about myself; you can probably put a solid guess together.

She was back into normal range by dinner, and even had a mild low when Matt checked her at 10. (Not a scary one, just a "hey, have a little milk" one.) And this morning she was right where we like to see her. So hopefully that episode is done with.

***

Back to work. The proposal doesn't go out until Friday, which means I won't be done with it until Friday. But I'm totally taking Friday afternoon -- and probably Monday -- off, as well.

Proposed

This was not the Best Ever Morning. It started out okay, except for the inevitable post-weekend weight gain when I stepped on the Wii Fit. But then Penny denied Alex's request to let him ride in the booster seat, which caused him to pitch a complete wobbly. (Flag, flag, hat. Both kids were completely jerky and unreasonable about the whole things. I thought about asking the daycare manager if she knew of any gypsies in the area who were in the market for some fresh kids.)

My day did not improve when I walked into the office and was waved down before I'd even put my things down and got dragged into a proposal. I'll be writing about three pages, which is trivial, and then I'll be coordinating putting everyone else's stuff together, which is distinctly nontrivial.

As usual, the proposal is due on a Monday, which means I'll be working some portion of the weekend. I've already told the guy in charge that Saturday is Right Out, as I have plans, but I can pretty well expect to be here late Friday and probably have to come in on Sunday, too.

I hate proposals. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em. Every time I get sucked into a proposal, I consider that Matt has health insurance that I could be on if I just walked.

And then I fired up my computer to find that I'm going to be taking over a couple of administrivia-type jobs here at the office. Which I hate.

So it's shaping up to be a pretty awesome day and week.

Cursewords apply.

News and Such?

What's with the exhaustion lately, dammit? I went to bed at 9:30 Tuesday night, and at 10:30 last night, and I still feel like I want to crawl back under the covers for a half-day or so.

On the other hand, I feel like I've been weirdly busy. Aside from work stuff, I've gone through edits on a story that's coming out at the end of this month (squee! that never gets old!) and gently poked two editors for news on other stories. (I know that's a no-no, but it's been over 3 months since I heard from either of them. I thought a gentle request for information was not entirely out of line.) I've edited a short novel (a really good one, too, which is always awesome!) and written a couple of scenes in a couple of my own projects.

I've made plans for lunch tomorrow, and talked to Penny about attending a gallery show and contest that my brother is in this weekend. (We've agreed she'll bring a book to read, in case she gets bored before it's over.)

I've drunk surprisingly little coffee, and chewed a slightly ridiculous amount of gum. (Soon, I will be out of gum, and then it will be time to kick ass, I suppose.) I've made mini-pizzas and sausage chowder and baked chicken.

The frog and dragon game obsessions continue, slightly abated but by no means extinguished.

Tonight will be TV night -- we need to watch Castle from Monday and Big Bang Theory as well.

And that's... about it, I guess.

I'm leaning strongly toward taking tomorrow off, so I'll see y'all on Monday! Have a great weekend!

Kingly

What a weekend!

We took the kids to see a stage production of The Lion King on Saturday. We didn't think to bring coats and wound up standing outside, waiting for the theater to open, for a good half hour. Then we got inside to discover that the seats were apparently built by and for midgets. Seriously -- I'm only 5'4" and my knees were pressed hard against the seat in front of me. Poor Matt was miserable -- and I can't even imagine how the poor guy a few rows in front of us felt, because he had to be at least 6'4".

Unfortunately, due to 6'4" Dude, I wound up sitting with my spine in an S-curve for the whole first act -- the lady behind him had to lean sideways to see around him, so I had to lean even further to see around her. I couldn't lean the other way, because that was the space Matt was using to squash his body into so as to avoid becoming intimate with the very nice older couple on his other side.

(I didn't take this - no cameras allowed - but it's almost exactly accurate. I couldn't find a good pic online of my favorite costume, the big 2-man elephant.)

It improved somewhat after the intermission, though. Matt moved to sit between the two kids, so he could spread his legs out sideways without inconveniencing anyone, and I took over the seat next to the older couple, behind a child and some adults who were of more normal height, so I could actually see what was happening. That left Alex to sit in the chair behind 6'4" Dude and Leaning Lady, but that was just a technicality -- he sat on my lap for the whole second act, and we both enjoyed the show much more.

As for the show itself -- amazing. I mean, I've seen the movie about six thousand times, between the two kids, but that turned out to be a benefit, because it meant I could mostly ignore the plot and the action and instead focus on the clever sets and props and puppets and the fantastic costumes. The costumes, oh my lord. Brilliant.

***

That night, we went over to Braz and Adin's for a D&D game with them and Jenn and Brian. After much discussion, we agreed to give 4th Edition a try -- Matt's been using it in his other monthly game and likes it, and he has an account with the online character-builder that takes all the guesswork out of figuring out to stack up your bonuses and stuff. So we gave it a try, and I think I actually quite like it. I'm not wild about the way it compartmentalizes the classes into, essentially, video-game raid roles (different names, but: tank, buffs, healer, and DPS.) But on the other hand, I might be reconciled to it -- those roles were always there, and this is just codifying the mechanic.

I definitely like the "powers" mechanic, and I think it does a fantastic job of balancing the classes as far as overall usefulness. It used to be that a low-level mage was a one-trick pony, and once they'd done it, they were useless for the rest of the day. It also used to be that a high-level fighter was more or less pointless next to a mage of the same level, and I think this will balance that, as well.

But in the truest test of a game, for me... the character is starting to move into my head and tell me about her background. So I'm looking forward to more of this game. And, apparently, I'm going to have an origin story to write soon.

Auld Acquaintance

Matt has a few friends that he's known since they were all in preschool, which I think is awesome.

The furthest back I can go (not counting a couple of Facebook acquaintances that don't even say hi once in a while) would be Jenn (forever enshrined in my brain as "Jennie B."), who I met when we were in the 7th grade. Our friendship has been very on-and-off -- she moved away when she was in the 9th grade, and aside from sporadic letters and a couple of summer visits (this was before email), I didn't really hear from her again until a bit before her wedding, when she called out of the blue to ask me to be a bridesmaid.

(It was a fall wedding, about a week before my birthday. Jenn and her stepmom hand-sewed all the bridesmaid's dresses out of antique gold silk. I still have mine; it may well be one of the most beautiful dresses I've ever worn. It's also the only bridesmaid dress that I ever got a second use out of, since the gold made it a lovely Christmas dress.)

The next year, she came to my wedding and, though I didn't have any bridesmaids, she stood up at the reception and gave what would have been the maid of honor's speech. (It also happened to be her birthday. I didn't do that on purpose. What's funny is that I'd never, never been able to correctly remember her birthday; for some reason my brain insisted that it was the 19th, no matter how many times she corrected me. Well, now I can remember.)

We fell out of touch again for a while after that, but she popped back up when Penny was born, and now we're in semi-regular contact, and I see her once a month or so.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. (Shades of Alice's Restaurant, there.)

After Jenn, the friend I've known longest is Mila. Mila and I met in the 8th grade, and we were the very closest of friends all the way through high school. She's older than me by a mere ten days, but was always years more mature. She introduced me to science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels. I tutored her through math. We would get on the phone nearly every night (this was before texting) and talk until we had to go to bed, though when I say "talk" I don't necessarily mean talk so much as tuck the phones under our ears and read books together, occasionally speaking up to read particularly good bits aloud. I spent as many nights at her house as I could possibly get away with, and I called her mother "Mommy" and I bummed rides from her older brother (who was hot, but I would never have admitted it under torture, because Mila was my friend).

We went to different colleges, and kept up over breaks, but eventually drifted apart. Every few years, I'd run into her while she was in town visiting her mom, or I'd run into her mom in a store, and we'd spend an hour or two catching up and talking about everything under the sun, and then promise to stay in touch and then it wouldn't happen.

She popped up on Facebook, but doesn't use it much, but that's all right, because neither do I. Every few days I'll log in and send her a poke, and every few days she logs in and pokes me back. We don't chat, but it gives me a warm feeling when I log in and there's a fresh "Mila poked you!" message up in the corner. It's a reminder of the days when we were in Latin or Geometry or History class together and she'd pass me a folded-up note under the desk and I'd unfold it and right at the top would be "pokepokepoke" and I would try to stifle my giggle and I'd write "Aaaargh! pokepokepokepoke!" next to her pokes and fold it up and pass it back to her. (We thought we were flying under the radar and avoiding disruption. From an adult perspective, all I can do is marvel at the patience of our teachers, because we never once got in serious trouble over this chronic note-passing.)

Tuesday night, I checked my email while Matt was taking out the trash, and was surprised to see a message from Mila.

The funny thing that came out of that message was the complete coincidence that her cell phone number is mine, plus one. Take the last digit of my cell number, add one, and that's her cell number. She doesn't even live in the same state as me, anymore. Her area code matches because she got the phone through her mom's plan, years ago. Completely out of the blue and random and bizarrely coincidental. And completely typical for us.

The unfunny thing that came out of the message was that she's just learned she has cancer.

When Matt came in from taking out the trash, I told him, and he looked into my stunned eyes and said, "Call her."

So I did. We talked for forty-five minutes or so, and I learned that she doesn't really know anything about the cancer -- they'd only just discovered it on Friday and she was waiting on further test results. And then we talked about our families (her brother had a heart attack last fall, which is much more in line with her family's medical history, and she joked that obviously she got cancer just so she could upstage him) and our jobs and our vacation plans. And then she promised to keep me updated, and we hung up.

I was rocked, but holding it together, mostly. And then yesterday she sent me a text message that the tests show the cancer has spread, so there will be chemo in addition to the surgery that was already in the planning stages. And I thought about her losing her hair, and how jealous I was all through high school that she could grow her hair so much longer than mine, and I lost it, a little bit.

"Just tell me before you fly out there," Matt said, Tuesday night.

Mila and I are not the closest of friends anymore, like we were in high school. I can only think of one situation that would put me on a plane, now. I can't say the words. Even the Mutant Worrybrain won't touch it, because the Mutant Worrybrain specializes in things that are all but impossible. I can only pray that it won't happen.