Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Holidays should not be allowed to fall on Mondays. I feel very confused. Apparently, it is TUESDAY and will be all day. I have a very bad feeling that I will not be able to remember this and, for an entire week, will be one day behind. Or ahead. I was, in fact, going to tell you all about the manga I've been reading, but TOMORROW is Wednesday, not today.

Today feels a lot like Monday because, in addition of having to take Shawn back to work, I woke up from several dreams of being behind on something. Do you have reoccurring dreams? There was a time when I got really into dream interpretation and I started keeping a dream journal. I discovered as part of that process that I actually have a LOT of dreams that are basically the same theme, only different. Like, there will be that one about a car without brakes (usually when I feel overwhelmed or, obviously, otherwise out of control in my life,) the one about being late for a test/con panel/[fill-in-the-blank] (when I feel like I've forgotten to do something), or, strangely, that one about my deep-seated, subconscious terror of elevators (just... irrational fears time, friends!)  I actually stopped recording my dreams when I started remembering nearly all of them (up to five in a single night) and some of them seemed to be straying into "things maybe left for the subconscious to work out, quietly, unobserved, on its own" territory.

At any rate, the dream of missing something prompted me to look back on my emails and discover that, in fact, I did have something pending.

I needed to review the .pdfs of my first five novels, which Wizard's Tower Press will be putting out in new print editions this February. They will be a kind of 25th anniversary edition with a new forward by me... and HARDCOVER editions. So, if you still have ratty, yellowing copies of my original novels, this might be the year to consider replacing them with sturdier, updated copies! Just sayin'  I will let you know when they go on sale, of course. But, so like, I worked on that and it felt very start of the work week for me, too. 

I'm doomed.

 Last night I dreamed of Donald Trump.

I have to preface the story of the dream by telling you that is not THAT unusual for United States presidents to show up in my dream. For some reason, my subconscious decided that I had gone to high school with Barack Obama, so he would randomly make appearances in my dreams "because" we were "old friends." None of which is true, of course, but Obama would just show up to my grandma's house with his full retinue of Secret Service and I'd be all, "Seriously, Barry? Couldn't you have called first? This house is tiny and the neighbors are staring!" all in a fun, joshing way. I blame the Internet and all the "watch President Obama nerd out over the science fair at the White House" videos for my subconscious just unilaterally deciding that we MUST already be friends with this guy, since he is so LIKE so many of the friends I already possess.

Last night, I was having a recurring dream I call "elevator." I have a deep seated fear of elevators, entirely based on the real life fact that my freshman college dorm had an elevator that would randomly stop between floors and you'd have to crawl up out to get out and STILL have to walk up three flights of stairs to get to your room. I lived high enough in the tower that I could easily walk DOWN to go to school, but going up was not that easy.  But, so ever since then, I have a nightmare where the elevator I am getting into is just... scary. It stops on the wrong floors, is really shaky, makes too much noise, etc. 

Into this ALREADY NIGHTMARE walks f*cking Donald Trump and two of his entourage, whom I am certain are Nazis of some sort because: Trump.  The fun part of my dream is that I looked this horrible human in his piggy little eyes and said, "GET OUT. NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE. IT'S ALREADY A NIGHTMARE, I DO NOT NEED YOU ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE," and...

...he did.

He was clearly scared of me. In my dream, he mutely looked around for help, and, finding none, literally backed off the elevator. 

I successfully chased him off!

I still ended up both stuck in the crappy elevator and then later had to go backwards on a gravity defying escalator BUT I AT LEAST GOT RID OF TRUMP. 

Seems like a metaphor for 2021.

My subconscious isn't the least bit subtle.

I had a dream last night about my new novel. Let me preface this with the fact that my editor/publisher Cheryl Morgan told me on Friday, I think, that Locus Magazine had picked up the press release regarding my new novel. This is definitely a 'yay' because I do worry that I've been so out of the publishing game that no one knows or cares about my work any more. Apparently, my subconscious has a different worry. See if you can guess what it is...

My dream last night went like this. I am at a science fiction convention where I'm doing some kind of volunteer thing (which may have involved taking a class on James Joyce, but that's not actually important.) When the con is over, I decide to be silly and make a chalk "thank you" poem that I write on the sidewalk outside of the convention center. The next day, above the fold, the Star Tribune (our local paper) writes a huge article critiquing how BAD my poetry is and what I stupid idea writing a thank you in chalk was to begin with, complete with quotes from everyone involved, including people I thought of as friends, basically saying that it's such a shame that a former science fiction writer has become such a weirdo.

Seriously, brain? ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO BE SUBTLE.

Clearly, I am terrified that the critics will hate the thing I am writing. I think it's a reasonable fear, so you don't need to comfort me and tell me I am awesome (I actually _do_ know this, but my subconscious is where the fears live, after all. My conscious brain is still mostly in charge, so no worries). I only share this with you all because it is truly hilarious to me the extent to which my dreams are so easily interpreted. Dr. Freud does not need to be paged. We got this one.

Otherwise, Sunday was lovely. We all slept in and then went out en masse to breakfast, my favorite meal. Mason had been agitating for a trip to Grandview Grill, so we went. It was crowded, but I had their delicious biscuits and gravy which pretty much sustained me until dinner time.

I also made some really good vegan sugar cookies, which, yes, I cut out in the shape of a turkey.



Picture: A muppet-y sort of shocked looking, turkey-shaped vegan cookie.

Very tasty, however. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, I guess? You can make amazing cookies with margarine and/or Crisco, so it stands to reason that the expensive version of those things would work just as well. This terrified turkey represents my biggest vegan success, so far. However, I have not yet tried out all the recipes that y'all have passed on. I am looking forward to those.

I do have to say that I appreciate the crowd over here on DW. I am _still_ getting advice on how to fix my vegan gravy, despite not asking for any. I do understand that my friends are literally just excited to help, but "cornstarch?" makes me laugh. Yes, my friends, I have heard of it, thank you for assuming I had _not._  This is literally the bonus of longer form, however. I guess I should just get in the habit on social media of writing a longer explanation, but, to me, that isn't how FB is supposed to be used. 

Anyway, that was my weekend. My big plans today, besides continuing working on the novel (that the Star Tribune will apparently hate, in my dreams, at least,) I have to take Willow to the vet for some booster shots at 11 pm. I should probably dig the carrier out of the basement now, actually. Her BIG appointment is in a couple of weeks... sometime after my birthday (which is coming up! Nov. 18!)

Hope you all are well!

 I'm sitting on the porch because the weather is so nice.

It's 50 F / 10 C out, which probably doesn't really warrant wide open windows, but, after the last bit of winter we've had here, it's just what I need.

I spent a good portion of this morning cleaning.  Shawn is on her bi-annual or semiannual (or whichever word means twice yearly) fairly deep cleaning kick. I say "fairly" deep, because we are NOT the sorts to move the fridge to clean behind or anything of that magnitude. But, I scoot around on the floor and scrub-up bits of cat puke and dust that have become part of the decor over the past several months. Of course, the frustrating part is that when I'm finished with all of this no one will be able to tell that I've made a dent. Our house generates cat puke and dust spontaneously, I believe. Like, I bet if we moved everything out and hosed the place down, the very next day it would look Miss Havisham's.

I decided today would be a good day for housecleaning because, for reasons known only to the universe, I woke up incredibly sleepy.  It might have been the weird dream involving the sushi place that served their sushi with a bucket of live minnows and prawns, as well as a side of roe-encrusted nan.  Perhaps that wasn't restful. It seemed wise to take advantage of my sleepiness to do some mindless drudgery. 

Right, back to it!

...not only that, but Tom Hiddleston's MCU Loki. It was really awesome. I think I turned into a crow at one point. But, we definitely made an alliance with the giant ant people.

I blame this on the fact that Shawn and I watched Kong: Skull Island together. Was that movie panned? We LOVED it.

But, today is Wednesday, so I'm supposed to be talking about reading. I read a ton of manga chapters this last week and not much else. So, I read:

Koi to Kedama to Otonari-san by Suzaka Shina
Ekrano by Kitoh Mohiro
Weekend Lovers / Yokubari na Shuumatsu by Fuwa Kiriko
Blue Drop / Buruu Doroppu by Yoshitomi Akihito
Wombs by Shirai Yumiko
Legend of the President’s Glasses / Kaichou no Megane Densetsu by Irie Aki

Of those, the stand-out was Wombs. It's a very odd, but compelling science fiction manga about women soldiers who, when impregnated with an alien lifeform, are able to travel through an alternate dimension that moves them through real space.  The story takes place on an alien planet that humans (presumably from Earth) have colonized and terraformed.  We're at war not with the native species, but with a second group of colonizers (presumably ALIEN) who think this planet belongs to them. Since we were there first, it's a fight.  The women are used as troop (and supply) transport, but also as scouts because the various spots that they can hop between are a network left behind (or possibly still used by) the planet's natives.  There's a lot of intrigue about various military groups agendas, what the natives are, what would happen if we let one come to term inside a human host, etc., etc.  There's unfortunately, only one volume that's been officially licensed. If you want to read it, you have to look for it on scanlation sites, like Mangago, etc.  The scanlators seem to have done four out of the five available volumes.

If you ever want to read what I think of the manga I'm reading, you can check out: mangakast.wordpress.com.  I review every manga I read.  Which reminds me that I should write something up about Kill a Kill, which I didn't finish because it turned out to be ecchi. 

In the department of things I'm watching, I just got caught up with Elegant Yokai Apartment Life (though Crunchyroll will likely release another one or two before the year is up, I suspect. I'm NOT a premium member, so I have to watch an extra week for the latest to free up.)  I started watching Mushi-shi, which I'm really enjoying.  I don't post much about the anime I watch because I'm SO SLOW. I'm kind of the exact opposite of a binge watcher. I watch one, half-hour episode a day, while hand-washing the dishes (we don't have a dishwasher.)  I have a couple of friends who can blow through an entire series in a matter of days.  I always feel like a slug in comparison.

How about you? Read anything interesting this week?

I may need to put another pot on this morning. It seems like it really wants to be one of THOSE DAYS. I was awakened from a lovely dream about flying to ice and snow on the car. I bundled out only to discover that the ice wasn't nearly as bad as it looked. The car doors, of course, froze a bit. They always do this with the slightest amount of provocation. It's irritating.

Got Shawn to work and Mason to school. As we headed to school, I realized that some people were already having a MUCH worse day than I was, because we saw a stranded school bus on Kellogg near John Ireland Boulevard. Mason and I talked a long time about cascading bad luck, because not only were the kids who were in the bus going to be late, but all the kids waiting on the bus were going to be wondering what was going on... AND on top of that the bus and its tow truck were taking up one whole lane on Kellogg which mean traffic was backing up on to highway 94 and all the way down to University Avenue.

That made me realize that no matter how rough things were this morning, a lot of people were having it a lot worse.

And although Mason had to do some of his homework in the car this morning, we managed to get it done exactly by the first bell at 8:10 am. We found out that today is International Herding Cats day from the gym teacher, who always keeps us abreast of such things, and Mason remembered to bring in the Multiplication Rock DVD for Mr. G. as well as a copy of one of the Captain Underpants book for one of the other teachers to borrow.

So, you know, even though it's gray and I'm stiff from not having gone to kuk sool wan all week (we WILL GO tonight, dang it!), as we say here in Minnesota, "can't complain."

I had a really great time yesterday at the Women of Wyrdsmith's regular Wednesday gathering. naomikritzer talked me off the bridge about the editoral letter I got for Tate's most recent WiP, and Eleanor bought me a mocha because I did the "agenting" work of printing out a story of hers and stuffing it into an envelope (which was subsequently bought by the editor we sent it to.) I even got a bit of revision work done, and am starting to see how I can make the book work the way my editor wants it to (mostly, anyway, and that's all a person can do,) We left a bit early because naomikritzer had an errand to do, and some guy was setting up a keyboard. I was a little nervous about him because he had a giant cross around his neck, kind of ganster for such a skinny white boy with a Jesus beard.

Speaking of Jesus, it just happened that, once again, as we were quietly working on our various writing projects, we overheard two women discussing their personal relationship with Jesus. As I confessed to Eleanor and Naomi, it's a terrible impluse, but something about overhearing that sort of talk always makes me want to start talking loudly about my personal relationship with Satan. In that spirit the three of us protelitized to each other about various non-Chrisitan miracles we'd witnessed, including the miricle of the Great Fish (you'll have to ask Eleanor about this at the next con you see her at. It's awesome,) and my funny experience of corrupting the famous line about how god is "inordinately fond of beetles" yesterday morning to include the Goddess' fondness for creepy-crawlies.

This is a lot how my Wednesday writers' hang-out usually goes. Plus, of course, we gossip wickedly about our fellow Wyrdsmiths and other writers we know or have heard of in SF/F. It's probably the biggest highlight of my week, most times.

Today is my busy day. I'm going off to volunteer -- now at 1:30 pm -- to Mr. G.'s class, and will be staying until the end of the day. I offered that he might need someone to help herd cats with boots and coats and such. Perhaps I will be useless, but I'm determined to do whatever I can.

All right. I guess I should get working!