Vicissitude and Season

This will be known in future days as the Week of Cellulitis. (Probably to be expanded to Two Weeks of Cellulitis by the end, but I hope not more than that.) I woke up last Monday to a sizable red area on my left calf, which might with imagination have been described as bull's-eye-ish, so my first thought was tick bite-Lyme disease. But it seemed unlikely that I'd had a tick attached for long enough to transmit disease in such a public spot - it's been too hot to wear long pants - and further developments made that more unlikely.

I went to the doctor, got a vague "too soon to tell" and an antibiotic prescription (because it did seem infected), saw no improvement (and a fever) the next day, went back Wednesday with a spreading lesion (but no fever, and I've had none since), was firmly diagnosed and switched to another antibiotic and told to draw a line around the red area to monitor development. It kept slowly increasing (and the dark part in the middle got bigger as well) so I called the doctor again this morning and he said "Go to the ER." So I did (hurray shiny new hospital five minutes from my house) and they did some tests and put me on intravenous antibiotics and sent me home with a 3-pills-every-6-hours prescription, and here I am, hoping that I can get on with all the stuff I have to do this week (we have a major garden event on Saturday, for one thing). I am fine aside from the ugly thing on my calf, which basically is my calf at this point, it's become so large. I have been tired (according to medical personnel I have a staggeringly good immune system, because I should have been much sicker, but fighting crime infection does take it out of you) and have been doing a lot of sitting without the energy to do much work, so I launched into a reread of all the Amelia Peabody mysteries, which has been great fun.

Cellulitis information and photos, if you're interested. (Mine is not nearly as disgusting as some of those. Just kind of frighteningly large. I did run out to buy some lightweight long pants, and I also have long skirts.) So far I have not had to explain to anyone that it's not the same thing as cellulite, though admittedly I haven't talked to that many people about it.

*fingers crossed*

(Earworm mondegreens are the worst. Although sometimes of narrative interest.)

Things that have happened:

1) Got to have lunch yesterday (as in, fairly hurried consumption of packaged hummus platters, with conversation, with only four other people) with a famous-in-my-world person I've admired for a long time. Who turns out to be simultaneously just as cool as I thought and a bit of a self-centered obsessive, but this is the way things go (perhaps someone will say that about me someday) and I will be floating on the experience for several days, I'm sure.

2) My sister has been posting online a scanned, translated-to-digital-text version of what's known in our family as the Bulletin, WWII letters that were compiled, edited, and sent out as a collection to the far-flung family by my great-grandmother. I read it all as a teenager, but it's much more interesting to revisit now, with a better sense of what it must have been like. The parents back on the farm in central Massachusetts, my great-grandfather commuting to Washington (wartime job as Executive Secretary of the National Apple Institute!), the three sons and son-in-law going off into the Navy (they all survived, despite my grandfather's ship being sunk), the daughter and daughters-in-law having babies and growing vegetables and generally coping. It's all very ordinary and yet has that "can't believe this shit is happening to us" aura fighting with relentless chin-up positivity. It's also fascinating to read with the writer brain in full gear, because it has that epistolary narrative feel and yet it is so very much not a novel: the arcs are not constructed, the foreshadowing is not intentional, the little cultural and historical notes are not placed for illumination, the characters aren't introduced, even the letter snippets are not arranged within the larger newsletter for any kind of effect, and of course often the news arrives out of sync. I could do so much better, you know? And yet it's real, and it has great resonance for me because I remember the players, but also because I get to know them better as their individual voices sing out from their letters. (I have to admit, too, that fanfic-brain occasionally steps in to comment on what offstage action someone might invent for these characters. Not that I think it would be likely to become a favorite source (did I mention the lack of narrative arc?) but I did laugh when one of the great-uncles mentioned a visit from a friend called "Bucky.") It's also fun to have it emerge a bit at a time as my sister gets around to the editing - very much the serial WIP! And of course a work-in-progress was exactly what it was, since none of them knew what the ending would be. Stiff-upper-lip New Englanders, but the tension must have been incredible.

3) It has been chilly and rainy all week, which has slowed our deck construction significantly, along with any other outdoor activities (I shivered for three and a half hours out in the demo garden on Tuesday). I've been busy in other ways and haven't made as much writing progress as I should, but at least I feel like I'm getting in gear again, even if I stop to research things much more than I actually put words down. (Next fact to ascertain: would escaped South Carolina slaves joining the British Navy during the Revolution have been given surnames, chosen their own, or left with a single name? Stuff like that there.) I can't work at home with the banging and sawing going on, so I may end up a lonely Starbucks lover myself. When it's sunny and dry I can work in parks (no wifi, but fewer calories).

4) I've been called for federal grand jury service starting mid-July. If I'm empaneled, this could mean driving to the courthouse an hour away every Wednesday for eighteen months. In practice, probably somewhat less, and I have a high enough number that I may escape. If not, at least it will be interesting, I hope (please no police shootings). It does seem rather unfair considering that long day of trial jury service last July, but it's a different random selection, and I guess my number was up. Still: argh.

5) I should probably just do a massive media consumption catch-up post (I think I have been saying that for months now, though, so perhaps I'm less than truly interested). Of note in the TV world, aside from various season finales, we've watched (unusually for us) a couple of comedies: season one of "Silicon Valley," which I found more interesting than I thought I would, because it has a real business-oriented story to ground it, but I do feel the significant lack of female characters (I know this is a self-aware comment on the industry, but surely they could have remedied the problem somehow); and "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," which is delightful on many levels, as long as I keep saying "comedy, comedy" to myself and don't expect deep psychological analysis. Speaking of earworms, though, OMG. They alive, dammit. (Also in cultural penetration news: the "fascinatin' transition" bit quoted in two speeches at the college graduation of son's girlfriend a couple of weeks ago.)

Onwards. Stuff.

Can anyone interpret this error message from the EPUB validator?

"could not parse tmp_9f528c285543e76fb2aa6c86a5253ee3_KqSZ1G.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_036.html: duplicate id: Frame1"

It's from the EPUB version of Time Goes By (derived from a Word file), and will prevent it from being sold at iTunes and other retailers. There's nothing apparently wrong with the readability of the file (either EPUB or Word), navigation from the hyperlinked TOC works perfectly in both, and there are no frames (by Word's definition, anyway) in the document. I thought I'd found the problem - Word having inserted some additional brackets similar to those that mark bookmarks when it put portions on the clipboard as I uploaded them to my website - but when I took them out and re-uploaded to Smashwords, I got the same error.

Any help would be appreciated greatly. I may repost after the holiday if I don't get any answers, because some of the American portion of my flist is probably out fighting weather on roads and in airports today. It's snowing here, but we aren't leaving until very early tomorrow morning, so I hope all will go well.

Also, in short, oh hell Ferguson, ow wrenched my back but hope it'll be better soon, and wow, what is POI trying to do to us? That was a painful episode.

And happy birthday, penwiper26!

This afternoon I get to stroll into the physical therapist's office with a knee brace on, and say "I'm here about my shoulder." Which will be entertaining if only to me. I'm hoping the knee thing is temporary and the usual treatment routine will deal with it. I did manage a hike of a few miles yesterday (with the brace on) and it never got beyond "well, ow" into "make it stop now" so probably I will survive walking around gardens and anything I plan to do on the upcoming trip. And it's the left knee, so no driving issues.

I'm leaving very early Saturday, and the itinerary goes: to Charlottesville VA for the Monticello Harvest Festival, then to Staunton VA, have dinner and see Marlowe's Edward II; Sunday to Hershey PA, walk around Hershey Gardens, on to Allentown to stay the night (because it's familiar territory); Monday to Haverstraw NY to look at historical markers, then on to Saratoga Springs (doing something along the way that is open on Mondays); Tuesday, see Yaddo Gardens, then drive on via whatever route makes sense given timing to St. Johnsbury VT; Wednesday make my way down to Small Point ME, stay at my uncle's house two nights, sort books, walk on the beach, etc.; Friday and Saturday nights at my dad's in Wellesley MA; Sunday night at my sister's in New Haven CT; leave Monday afternoon and stay somewhere along the way and then decide whether I'll get home Tuesday or Wednesday depending on desire to stop at some other garden or such.

That takes me to the 23rd or 24th of this month; then we leave Oct. 6 for Italy. We are still planning that, but it'll be Venice, Rome, Sorrento, Florence, with stops along the way: a bit over two weeks. Plane tickets were bought yesterday, and I found boarding for the cats today; everything else is of slightly lesser importance.

It's more fun to think about all that than this week, but I'm sure doing two talks seventeen hours apart was not a stupid decision at all (given the increasingly faint hope that the uncommunicative contact person for the second talk, who needs to let both of us and not just me into the secure government facility, and also pick up the powerpoint I shared with her since we can't upload from a thumb drive, see secure government facility, will actually read her email and get back to me that it's all taken care of sometime before we get there Wednesday morning). This is followed the next day by helping to host a statewide meeting and potluck lunch that at the moment seems rather underpopulated going by the RSVPs, but I'm sure plenty of people will turn up. With food. And I have time on Friday to pack.

You'll hear from me on the road, I'm sure.

Miscellany: writing, cats, TV, etc.

1) I wrote the first sentence in Book Five last night:

The muffled oars whispered secrets to the river as the boat slipped downstream, returning Major John André to the safety of the Vulture.

Which should alert those familiar with the incident that something weird is going on, but never fear, I will explain what and why and how very quickly. I haven't written any more yet, but perhaps I'll get time to do that today; I do know how it goes on. For a little while, at least. And am very glad to get started, and impressed that I've written something considering my mental state a couple of weeks ago.

Also got a laugh when I reviewed the history and saw what the name of the sloop was. Birds, I tell you: following me around.

(The next line in the "How to Suppress Women's Writing" litany goes: She wrote it, and then she wouldn't shut up about it. Sorry not sorry.)

2) Cats! I said I'd write about cats, and I haven't done an update in ages. We still have Lancelot and Hotspurr, and they are well. Hotspurr is now an indoor-outdoor cat - I swore this wasn't going to happen, after losing the last cat (plus others, previously) to outdoor threats, but he had other ideas, and as soon as spring arrived he began scratching and whining constantly (I mean, for hours at a time) and shooting out the door whenever we opened it, and we eventually gave in. (Tried the leash thing first - nope, not going for it.) He's five years old, so he had fully-developed habits before we adopted him, and clearly no one ever denied him anything, including access to the outdoors. He's also refused to wear a collar (he lost six of them outdoors before we stopped putting them on) but he does have a chip at least. And he's smart about what's out there, though I'm reconciled to the possibility that some of it will eventually kill him. He'd just be miserable inside all the time; some cats just are The Cat Who Walks By Himself, and that's how it is. He's done two all-nighters out so far, and been caught out in several thunderstorms, though he tends to curl up on a chair and sleep the whole next day.

Lancelot is still an indoor kitty, because I don't trust him to avoid danger outside, and because the only reason he seems to want to go out is because Hotspurr's there. They bonded nicely in the winter, but while Hotspurr is fond of Lancelot, Lancelot loves Hotspurr, and now he spends days waiting by doors and windows for his friend to come back. We are seriously thinking of getting a third cat, if we can find one guaranteed to prefer the indoors.

3) I'm kind of liking the break from TV in the summer (though the POI preview clip from ComicCon looked awesome), which we are filling desultorily with episodes of "Borgen" - it's a Danish political drama about a female prime minister in a coalition government, and it's intriguing and fun and poignant in a way that's more "West Wing" than "House of Cards" (or "Yes, Minister"), and blends the political and the personal in a balanced way. We're about halfway through the second season. In Danish with subtitles - which means I can't watch it if I'm sleepy, because my eyes will close and I'll have no idea what's going on, but it's been interesting. Neither of us speaks Danish, but I know a little German and J. used to be fluent, so some of the roots are familiar and occasionally we'll pick up a word here and there. We concluded pretty quickly that a lot of sounds get seriously elided, because when there's something you know they should be saying (because it's in the subtitle and not likely to be a mistranslation) you still don't hear it. And then occasionally there will be phrases in English - there are whole scenes in English, I mean, when they're talking to people from other countries, but also just little bits of jargon or idiom that apparently have been adopted into Danish parlance, which is kind of weirdly endearing and startling. Only available here on DVD - which, wow, when was the last time we watched one of those?

4) Subject line is one of my favorite bits of Vienna Teng, from "In Another Life":

In another life
I was married at thirteen
You were killed at twenty-one
On a minor battlefield

which I just think is genius in the "adding insult to injury" way. Minor battlefield, ha. It's the sort of thing Rinaldo would like, and since that's his POV up there in the first line of Book Five (which still has no title) I am particularly inclined to attach to it. (Last book used all female POVs; this one will be all male, which makes it the first book without Olivia's interior perspective, though possibly I'll give her the epilogue.)

5) I've been having shoulder panics. When you've had two frozen shoulders, any lasting pain or stiffness in those joints leads to worry (which probably doesn't help in terms of loosening up) about the possibility of losing most of your range of motion, plus any ability to exercise (because of extreme pain on jarring), for a year or so. I am just back in the swing of things where exercise is concerned, after the frustration of the knee problem, and having that go away again would be devastating. But I'm hoping it's just the temporary result of doing too-speedy hand-weight lifts in Jazzercise. Lots of stretching is in order.

Have deleted last entry since it's not really fair to the Apple employees, although I am still mad at the system. I took my hardware in, and it turned out that the data was there, just that the folder was hidden behind the warranty PDF file. I should have seen it, but I didn't, and I feel stupid, and I'm sure I'll get joked about in the store's back room.

However, if I had been able to talk to someone on the phone this morning, instead of being shunted into making an appointment and a trip I didn't need, I'm sure I could have described what I was seeing, or fergodsakes sent them a screenshot of it, and the problem could have been solved in five seconds. It's half an hour for me to the store - how about people who have to drive further? Though there is online help available - just, if you've already been to the store, the automatic assumption is that you should go back and deal with the same people, right?

Well, at least I got a lot of angry weeding done. :)

I have a stinking cold, and I have to drive to Allentown and back later today, and I've seen the digital proof for Time and Fevers and yes, I am going to have to work on the cover more. (I don't think it's entirely my fault that it's misaligned, but one must meet CreateSpace where they are.) Despite my "must do this NOW" urges, I know it's much better to wait until I'm feeling better and no longer in the "oh fuck it, this'll do, let me go bury myself in Elementary season two" state of mind. But I'm looking at my calendar for the next couple of weeks and weeping. Why did I think bringing out a book in the height of spring was a good plan? Oh, because the MacGuffin is tulips and it was so cute to have people reading it when the tulips were blooming. Well no, not if I have no time for marketing until summer, and most of the people I can guarantee will read it are equally busy right now.

*sigh*

On the other hand, it didn't snow two days ago, so that's good. (It did sleet, and drop below freezing, but I think all the flowering things and the seedling plants survived.)

I will be much happier when my head is not a mass of snot. Really.

So, yesterday is over and I got through three hours of standing in front of the new Master Gardener class telling them what they need to know about vegetable gardening just to be going on with, and now I get to move on to the next thing, or the next several things. Which include: speaking to teachers about container gardening (done that before, collaborative effort, no biggie); doing a whiz-bang little half-hour talk on root vegetables at the spring conference, timing being critical because my talk partner has to fit in a cooking demo and we need to end on time; in March speaking, again with a partner (though we have yet to work out who does what), on keeping animals out of food gardens (moving ahead on this powerpoint is a major priority of the coming week); in April doing a talk on edible landscaping to a garden club and/or a basic vegetable gardening talk to interested members of the general public, I wish we could get it settled which; and, looking ahead to the end of May, creating from scratch and presenting a talk I've wanted to do for a while, at the statewide MG annual training day (my most potentially critical and certainly best-informed audience). (It's called "Purple Carrot People" and here is the summary: Ever thought you might want to grow that strange-looking squash in the seed catalog, or try purple carrots even though orange ones taste perfectly fine? Let's talk about the how and why of new-to-you crops, the benefits of novelty-vegetable-seeking behavior in a changing world, and why we should banish the word "exotic" from our vegetable vocabulary.)

None of those is three hours, so should not be so completely enervating, but still I know exactly how I'll feel afterwards. I'm thinking of it as the introvert response. I'm quite used to public speaking now, and really rather like it as long as I'm talking about something I feel confident about and interested in. I also like the events where I'm standing in the garden talking to individuals as they ask questions. And I know people regard me as energetic and enthusiastic and approachable and comfortable with an audience, which is weird because I am none of those things, though apparently really good at faking it. (I can honestly respond with gratitude and acceptance to "That was really clear and well-organized." Though occasionally that's faked as well.) But I get home from an event and need to not talk to people for hours afterwards (yesterday I had food and tea and watched about five episodes of Angel, which is pretty funny in context, Mr. Tall Dark and Introverted) and yet keep having little bits of conversation and/or lecture pop up in my head to haunt me and inform me what I've done wrong (even though I know on the whole I did it right).

Ah well; I am stuck with it now. Other things on the list for the coming week include pulling together the complete draft file for Time and Fevers and starting the formatting, which this time comes before final editing. I still plan to have that out by the end of April (in the middle of Oh My God Everything but what else is new). I need to get the author blog moving again and send out reminders to the mailing list of people I know personally who have read the first book to please find it in their hearts to write a review (by the way, I am on Goodreads, and let me remind you of my website). Today, along with shopping and laundry, I really need to start microgreens and write something about squash for the Grow It Eat It blog. And I had an ominous Return of the Migraine this week, so personal fitness needs to up its priority as well.

This is all to say you're not likely to see me on Tumblr in the near future, or contributing anything substantial to POI discussion (I drifted off a little during this week's ep, but hope to watch it again at some point), and fic is a very iffy proposition, though certainly the urge may come upon me at some point. But I'll be around.

I had a dream early this morning about my dog Hal who died in 2007. I was sitting in bed, hugging him, and… tactile memory is an amazing thing, because it was the exact sensation of feeling that furry barrel chest under my arms and fingers. (I was in a bad car accident in a dream earlier in the night, but that was entirely made of intense visuals derived from TV.) Since I knew Hal was a dream, I rolled off the bed to wake myself up, and was still holding him, and asked P, who'd just come in, if he could see the dog (this is derived from Lost, no doubt), and he said yeah, sure, but then I realized it was 12-year-old him with an elementary-school sweatshirt on and long hair, so definitely a dream. And then I woke myself up and was in bed hugging my husband, but that was a dream too. It took two more tries to actually come awake.

In other news, I did about five sessions yesterday with the "personal steamer" I'd forgotten we had, and am feeling much better around the sinuses. I feel utterly ridiculous sticking my face in the thing, but it works. A few more times today and I might clear the nagging little obstruction that's left.

Still enormous amounts of space left in the posting meme, if you have any interest in watching me natter on about things.

ETA: Did a post yesterday at my author blog about categories and genres and how they relate to Time for Tea. I have no idea if anyone will read these posts, but it's nice to have a space to write about my own writing in. Also soon I will likely post Bernard's art gallery and stuff about tea.

I am beginning to suspect that announcing oneself as a novelist to a hundred or so of one's closest friends and relatives is a bit like coming out as gay. Only a little, I hasten to add - I don't need the entire internet jumping on me for straight privilege - but I think in the next few weeks I'm going to have lots of encounters that go: "I had no idea! That's so wonderful! Good for you!" ...you aren't going to write about me, are you?

In other news, spent the afternoon washing and cooking greens, and then the internet went out just as I was going to answer all the emails and comments, but we found out what was wrong and it came back. And soon I am off to see a high school production of "Sweeney Todd." (I still go to the shows at my kids' high school. This may be the last, though; the ones I knew are graduating.)

Out tomorrow night too, having dinner with people who will say "I had no idea! Good for you!" I should not resent missing "The Good Wife" or a chance to watch more "Breaking Bad." Really I shouldn't.

Need to eat the greens now.