having written

did i mention i finished a draft of my story? well, i did, on saturday. it was only 7 pages, but that's totally okay. the ending came before i expected it to, but when that last sentence was typed, i knew it was the last sentence. it feels fantastic. i'm still working with the story, editing and elaborating, and now it's 8 pages long (3012 words). it could still grow. i like it. i don't know if it's good, of course; only distance from it will tell me that, but at present i am very happy.

i want to write another one this weekend, with at least some of the same characters. i have a couple of ideas already; i just have to choose which one to write first. whee!

on the downside, i'm still sneezing, and getting a little tired of that.

buoyancy

i woke early this morning, sneezing, but i took some allergy medicine and i'm all right now. i think my cold is kicked. still, i was awake, so i came upstairs before 6 and worked some more on my story. the writing is going all right (despite my frequent internet distractions), which i admit is surprising to me. the plot is maybe a tad melodramatic, but overall i'm pleased. revision is always a possibility. i've got 4 pages (almost 1500 words) and i'm envisioning a story of 8 or 10 pages. kara's got a bunch of schoolwork to do today, so i might even get a draft done. how about that?

to be honest, i only wrote about a page yesterday, but this morning i'm doing better. i have an ambitious vision of a cycle of stories surrounding the characters i was planning on writing a novel about over the summer, but i'm trying not to get ahead of myself. nor am i going to limit myself to these few characters if i want to write something different in the months to come. my ideas are almost always bigger than what turns out to be plausible, so i'm attempting to keep my ambition in check. still, though, i'm happy about this current story. for now, i'll leave it at that.

the weather was crisply autumnal yesterday, clear, temperature in the 50s. it was gorgeous. i ran my errands efficiently and then spent some time outside with the dogs. they didn't annoy me at all, though i think the weather and my generally buoyant mood had something to do with that. yesterday they were good dogs. i wrote a bit more in the afternoon and did some cleaning around the house.

kara came home from work a bit before 5. we made a simple dinner and relaxed for the evening. as i say, today i think i'll keep on writing for a while, while kara writes her essays for school. when she gets out of bed she'll make us some eggs. i'm not planning on leaving the house, and i like days like this. it's cooler this morning, and a bit foggy. tomorrow i have to work but, again, without leaving the house.

fidelity

i just came back from breakfast; i went on my own (kara's at work) to a place across the street that i like. i had a spinach and mushroom skillet, with eggs of course, and feta cheese. i brought with me a notebook to sketch out some ideas for a story, and i think i might have something. when i'm done here, i'll start working on that.

there were 2 young women at a table near mine, younger than i, obviously students, with binders and 3 x 5 cards and such. what i overheard of their conversation touched on anemia, hemoglobin, iron, thalassemia. they might well have been medical students preparing for an exam. i was sitting there, eating my breakfast and thinking it might not be wholly unreasonable for me to strike up a conversation with them. i could mention my current line of work and we might get to talking. of course i didn't do any such thing, and this comes with some regret.

because i noted that the women were attractive, there was guilt accompanying my desire to speak with them. it's not as if i wanted anything more than conversation, but perhaps my conception of infidelity is a little sensitive. anyway. i sort of wished i'd talked with them.

at the same time, i don't know how to start a conversation with strangers like that. "say, forgive me, but i couldn't help but overhear you talking about hemoglobin ..." ridiculous.

anyway. i ate my breakfast, wrote in my notebook, drank my coffee, and left the place. i talked to no one. i am home now. the dogs are downstairs and the cats are up here. i'm going to work on this new story.

another steve and other things

i'm feeling quite a bit better, as of yesterday. i still have some soreness of the throat in the mornings and some sniffling throughout the day, but there has been a marked improvement. kara's much better too. yay.

here's an interesting article about the f-bomb by one of steve's namesakes. it's not short, but it's worthwhile, in my opinion.

i've decided not to do the novel-writing marathon this year after all. i just don't feel like it. so for those of you who've received a spiral-bound rough chunk of my fiction the last 2 christmases, i have to say that you're out of luck this year. sorry.

i've been reading these murakami short stories, and while the stories themselves aren't really much to talk about (they're quite flimsy), in his introduction to the collection the author writes rather engagingly about his writing habits, how he goes from novels to nonfiction to short stories and back.

i'm going to focus my reading, at least in the immediate future, on short stories. i'm going to reread some raymond carver first, because he was inspirational when i started writing fiction in college (and i recently read an article somewhere about an unedited edition of what we talk about when we talk about love appearing in bookstores in the coming months). and there's jean thompson and lee abbott, neither of whom i've read yet, but who i want to read, and oh my - lots more. so i've been feeling excited about that as an idea.

of course i haven't acted on it yet, i mean in terms of writing, but that i currently blame on my now-resolving illness. probably by friday, my next day off work, i will be altogether out of excuses not to write. so by christmas 2008, with due diligence, there might be a collection of my short works spreading around the place.

still cold

ahh. i do like a nyquil-assisted sleep. the dreams are amazing. the downside is, i wake up coughing. i don't know why that is, but the cough definitely waits in there for my consciousness to emerge. my symptoms and kara's seem to have reached a level. for the past 4 or 5 days i've had intermittent headache, coughing/sore throat, and rhinorrhea. sometimes i feel all right. sometimes i get all 3 symptoms at once. let it be known that the rhinorrhea, when it comes, is copious. it was 9 days ago that all this started for me, and maybe 7 days ago that it started for kara. as i say, no change in the past 4 or 5 days. it just keeps going on, as do i. i'm working from home today, and kara is home to take care of the dogs (though she has a bunch of schoolwork to do), and i'm glad about that.

it can't last much longer. it just can't. can it?

puppy honeymoon

it was 2 weeks ago tomorrow, sunday october 7, that, for me, the puppy honeymoon ended. i just woke up that morning in a foul state. i don't know if i slept badly or had nightmares or what, but i woke up flat-out frustrated with the dogs. the build-up had reached the top of the dam, i guess. my patience was at an end, as far as their following me when i cross a room, their being underfoot, their jumping up when i come home, their pissing and shitting in the house, their not coming when i call, their trapping the cats upstairs, everything. the floor is littered with their toys, the house is a disaster. that day, i just didn't want anything to do with them. at all. ever. i have since calmed down a bit. kara has taken up the slack; she knows the dogs are pretty much hers. she knows i would be happy without them. again, it's a wonderful thing that we don't have kids, because i know i would have zero tolerance for kids too. i would be such a rotten parent. i feel bad regarding for my feelings toward these dogs. doesn't everyone love dogs? and i admit that sometimes the dogs are fine, sometimes i like them. generally when they're lying down and quiet, i like them. i like a sleepy dog. most of the time i just want to let kara deal with them. i'm sorry, but that's pretty much how it is. am i a bad person? perhaps. a bad parent, certainly; i accept that readily. on that bad day, the 7th, kara feared i would be asking her to get rid of them, but that's not the situation.

kara just left with dagmar, for his 2nd day of school. steve's in the crate, because i don't trust her. yesterday afternooon we took them to the vet again. dagmar is 30 pounds (and his paws are still enormous; he's going to be huge) and steve is 26. they got their first rabies shots. they get the big snip in 2 months, a bit of a christmas present.

infectious

i have infected kara. that's the worst of it. i felt better as yesterday went on, and work was fine. however, i was up several times last night coughing. i'm up early today because i'm going to a drugstore before work to pick up some of this and perhaps the nighttime version as well. kara doesn't like the nighttime version but i do. i was on it that night in lynnwood when yellow brought a large live rat into our home and i was on it when i whacked that rat with a broom down the stairs and out the front door of our duplex. anyway. kara might have it worse than i did on saturday. she's all coughing and achy and miserable. she doesn't have the aforementioned bad habit that i do, so she's taking today off work. but i, as i said, am going to the office after picking up some medicine at an all-night drug store. i like all-night stores, the slow-moving and dense atmosphere of such a place in the small hours of the morning. of course, it's almost 6, hardly the small hours any more. all the same. i feel terrible for having gotten kara sick. i'm glad she's able to take the day.

plus we just watched the zombie movie 28 weeks later via netflix, so we definitely know how bad infections can be.

comeuppance

one of my bad habits is taking mental-health days off work; that is, calling in sick when i'm not physically ill but just don't feel like working. i don't know if it's the hesitant subversive in me or what. i'm a just wage slave and maybe part of me is occasionally bitter about that; i have so many hours of paid sick time due me, and i might as well use it. regardless, i got in a bit of trouble for it a couple of weeks ago, as i'd taken more days off in a 12-month period than the powers-that-be deem justifiable. so, obviously this means i can't call in sick for a good while to come (even though i still have the hours stored), or else i'll be written up a second time.

so what happens friday afternoon while i'm at work, and facing a one-day weekend (after my three-dayer last weekend)? a little tickle in my throat. this evolved into full-blown debilitating head and chest congestion as the evening wore on, and yesterday, saturday, i was in bed all day with this as well as general aches and malaise. bona fide malaise, not fictional. i've fibbed about illness so many times before, so i don't expect anyone to believe me now when i say i'm actually sick, but, really, i am. and today i have to work.

actually, granted, i feel a tad better today than i did yesterday, but my nose is running and i have a pretty good headache and i'm coughing and stuff. i would recover more rapidly if i spent another day on my back, but that is something i cannot do. doubtless this is deserved, no?

no glove no love

i think the most interesting report i typed today was a summary of a surgical repair of a penile fracture. and i'm no physician, i just type the reports, but i'm guessing that the term "fracture" is used loosely here, or at least not the way i ordinarily think of it; because, oh, i'm pretty darn sure there aren't any bones in the human penis. of course there's cartilage and vessels and i don't know what all else, and i suppose that stuff can be fractured, at least in a sense, especially when the fucker is engorged - er, i mean, when an erection is present.

anyway, this particular 40-something-year-old gent was apparently privy to some vigorous sex and sustained a bit of trauma. details of the event are unavailable at this point, so our imaginations will have to suffice. the procedure he subsequently underwent consisted simply of degloving the shaft (which the dictating surgeon kept calling the "penile phallus," though if that's not redundant i don't know what would be), draining a hematoma, repairing a small tear in the tunica albuginea, and stitching the member up again.

there's something about the word "deglove" that sends chills all through me. kara listened to a stephen king book on tape a year or 2 ago, the one in which a woman is left handcuffed to a bed after her lover dies or something. i hope you'll forgive the spoiler but, per kara's description, the woman ends up freeing herself from the cuffs by slowly and i'm sure painfully pulling one of her hands through the metal manacle about her wrist, effectively degloving her hand. that's just horrible; i don't think i'll be able to read or listen to that book, ever.

anuria

the good news is that before coming to work yesterday morning, the 2nd, i located the source of the cat waste odor. there was a bunched-up throw rug in a distant corner of the room. when i gingerly picked it up it was damp, and it adhered to the floor slightly. the wood floor beneath it was stained black, and that was stupid nasty. and the stench was abominable, to be sure. i threw the rug into the wash and scrubbed the floor a bit with 409. in the evening, after returning home from the office, i scrubbed the floor again, with bleach and a brush. then i sprayed pureayre liberally. kara was home yesterday, after working the weekend, and she put the rug through the wash multiple times, but it might be a lost cause. however, this morning the stench upstairs was all but gone. i am pleased. (i did put an extra litter box in the vicinity, in case of emergencies.) all the same, this victory does not change my weekend plans of putting the jumble of the upstairs room into some semblance of order.

urea

one of the cats has peed somewhere upstairs, perhaps multiple times, but i know not where. i believe it was eliot, although i have only circumstantial evidence against him; he is markedly more wigged by the dogs than is yellow. the sharp pungent odor does permeate, making our eyes water. the large upstairs room is full of clutter and there are myriad nooks and hollows among our scattered belongings where a timid and perhaps angry cat might choose to relieve himself. over the weekend, which is rather a long way off i admit, i will endeavor to organize the clutter, a task that certainly should have been done some 24 months ago when we moved into this house. the upstairs, aside from my office, has been used only for storage so far and it is the cats' refuge. i will find the source of the odor and i will eliminate it utterly.