Mission

So Penny's A1C was up, rather than down, which was a bit disappointing. Not to mention slightly frustrating, as there's no obvious pattern of high blood sugars that we can combat. The endocrinologist recommended some tweaking, and said if she was still running high in three months at her next quarterly checkup, that he'd want to put her on a continuous glucose monitor for five days or so to let us pinpoint the problem.

Penny is not too keen on the notion of the CGM. She thinks it will get in the way and make it hard to sleep at night. It's hard to counteract that, since it very well might, but I'm actually kind of interested to see how she adapts, since I'd like her to graduate to an insulin pump eventually, for better overall control, and that's another 24/7 attachment.

The other news that came out of the visit is that Penny's height has gone from "on the short side" to "wow, really short". But it's impossible to know how much of that is the diabetes starving her of growth hormones and how much of it is just genetics, since I'm not exactly top-shelf-reaching, myself. But it's not that huge a deal -- it's not like Penny was harboring a dream to play basketball. And there's not much we can do about it, anyway.

***

I sat down to write last night and was... not feeling it. I managed to choke out about 700 words, but I didn't like any of them, and I was writing them with the distinct feeling that they were probably going to get yanked when I went through on the edits. Which is not a very productive feeling.

I was bitching to KT about it in chat, and she said something that completely challenged the whole structure of the story. Or more precisely, she took one of the basic premises of my story and wondered if it was necessary at all. And once she'd asked the question, I realized that... no, it really wasn't.

Changing it at this point will require re-writing somewhere between a third and a half of the story. But the main elements -- the ones that make up the story's beating heart -- they'll survive with only minor changes. The thing that I thought was integral to the story turns out to be just... a detail.

Which completely blew my mind for a while, and I'm almost grateful that tonight is not a writing night, because I need some time to back up and make notes about how the remaining plot points need to shift focus and the bits that will have to be rewritten, and the broader, more sweeping edits to look out for. (For one thing, my main protagonists' names are going to have to change. Again. And possibly my antagonists', as well.)

But for all the work that change is going to cause, it also relieves me of one really enormous bit of Ugly that I was hoping to avoid, so I'm grateful for it. Better toss out half now and rewrite than have to re-do 3/4 of it once I got to the editing stage, right?

***

Today's mission: head to Target to pick up Valentine cards for the kids to give to their classmates. Penny has requested "smelly" cards for her class, so I have to find either scratch-and-sniff Valentines, or scratch-and-sniff stickers to include with the cards. (Stickers might be easier, if I can find them.)

Alex's classmates, since Matt and/or I will be doing them for him, will be getting whatever I feel like getting.

And I need to get Valentine's presents for the kids, too. But that should be fairly easy -- a toy and a little four-piece box of chocolates should do the trick there.