Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

You know those days when you procrastinate from one useful and necessary thing by doing some other useful and necessary thing?

Ayep.

Our Swedish family is heading out this morning -- not back to Sweden yet, but to points west, to see cactus and desert and Disneyland and San Francisco. I think we all had an extremely good visit together, and I'm more eager to go back to Stockholm than I was before they came. (And note that the prospect of going back to Stockholm didn't precisely fill me with indifference before.) We all knew that we were fond of Johan and Ulla, and I had e-mailed with Lars (who will turn 20 in August) and seen him when he was a baby, but we really didn't know Henrik (18) and Sophie (16) at all. And now they're their own people for us and not just an undifferentiated mass labeled "Johan and Ulla's kids." Also we actually like the people they are. There's no guarantee that people you like will have kids you like, or that they won't be going through an awkward time when you see them. But it was fun for everyone, I think. Certainly it was fun for me, and I can't wait to hear the updates on their travels farther west. I hope they come back soon.

I was going to make you guess which pair of words we couldn't manage to translate into Swedish with the collective might of the whole family, but I don't think you'd ever get there, so I'll just tell you: cobbler or crisp, in the sense of a fruit-bottomed dessert. They have words for cobbler meaning "person who makes shoes" and for crisp as an adjective, but they thought the dessert would probably have the same word as "pie." I fed them cherry-peach crisp, so it wasn't that they didn't know what I was talking about, it's just that Swedish isn't big on that particular culinary vocabulary subset.

(And in other news, cherry peach crisp with fresh cherries and peaches is a really, really good idea. Such a good idea that I may make another for my birthday party. Yum.)

Around here, I'm going to start catching up on the things that haven't gotten done in the last week, including work on the book and various other things. (Mopping. Laundry. Sleep.)

The part of the book I wrote last night was only a little bit technically difficult for me, but it was emotionally a very tough bit to write. Made me want to hide under the desk for awhile. And I'm not one of those people who believes that if it's emotionally difficult to write, it's definitely good; I know I may have to go back and redo the whole thing if it turns out to be terrible when the book is drafted, or even if it's good but not doing what needs doing. But it's drafted for the moment, at least, and there are probably only two other spots in the book that will be hard like this, unless something sneaks up on me.

The painters have been and powerwashed the house. It looks awful. We're having a few people over tomorrow, and I hope they all close their eyes until they're well inside, because -- wow. A lot of the paint came off. It looks like a hovel. The painters will be back to scrape tomorrow, too, so I expect this is a "will get worse before it gets better" situation. Still, this hovelness represents solid progress: the house is getting painted. Which is definitely what we wanted.

And I smell like strawberries and blueberries, hazelnuts and oats and spices, and that's a good thing, too.

A few weeks ago I read an article in New Scientist about how people who make a point of "counting their blessings" or "thinking happy thoughts" at regular intervals are actually less grateful/happy/etc. than those who do so at irregular intervals. I've been thinking about that on the one hand, and on the other hand I've been thinking that I really do believe in the power of the schedule, the to-do list, the calendar. And I've been trying to reconcile all that, and the focal point of it has been that I would like to play the piano more, and I would also like to avoid adding one more thing to my weekly to-do list.

Here's what I've got so far: I think that some things are better off for having the room for spontaneity carved into one's life. That being grateful for good things is good, but that allowing oneself the mental breathing room to notice them as they come up, not just alternate Wednesdays at 2:00, is important and useful. And that it's much, much harder to set aside space in one's life as a flexible thing, as a spontaneous thing. It's sometimes hard to carve out half an hour to walk in the park and appreciate the waterlilies on the lake with one's dog, but it's even harder to do it in the abstract, to do it without writing on the schedule, "5:30 - 6:00 appreciate natural world and affection of pet, 6:00 - 7:00 cook and eat dinner," etc. So in the case of the piano, maybe I'm right to get in fewer half-hour sessions but do them when I truly get the urge -- because practicing the piano is not something I'm doing for a career in musical performance, or for a serious amateur group with other serious amateurs, or to keep a promise, or for any other reason than that I kind of want to. For other people, playing the piano is the thing that should make the daily schedule no matter what, and writing or baking or other things I do a lot can be "just for the love of it." Maybe. At least that's the way I'm thinking of it now.

It strikes me as pretty counter-cultural, though, the idea that more regular gratitude, isn't necessarily better. Surely scheduling some positive virtue for daily exercise has to be better than leaving it to whenever you feel like it, doesn't it? Apparently not always. Or apparently room to mull things over is a value that adds to other values, a virtue that adds to other virtues. I already had come to part of this conclusion with my paper journal: that while it is noticeably good for me and good for my writing if I write in the paper journal often, scheduling it as a list item makes it less effective. Finding the space for it with less sense of obligation -- making the space for it among the other things I want to do -- or making the space to notice that I want to do it -- seems to work better. And, not entirely incidentally, to be more fun.

I'm not giving up on the to-do list; I'd go nuts. I'm just still working on the balance of it.

I'm also wondering how much of the cascade of genuinely fun stuff to write in this book -- last night's work notwithstanding -- is the result of having had sufficient mental space to mull it over.

Well. We'll try that, I guess.

I now seem to be getting all of my e-mail, or at least I don't know of mail I'm not getting. Whew.

We had a worry about my grandfather's health that now looks like it is a minor and fixable issue, so that's a larger source of Whew.

We are the proud owners of all the groceries. All of them. It's very easy to get to the point where you have more groceries than you have mrissa when you fill the cart and the bottom of the cart and then also buy two 40-pound bags of water softener salt. Sometimes my grocery shopping sort of runs away with me -- I mean to be getting a lot of things to feed to specific people on specific occasions, and while I'm in that aisle to get one thing I see two more things we know we'll want to have in the pantry, and one thing we might want to try, and...it snowballs. Rapidly. Oof.

Ista does not approve of me being gone to get my back fixed and go to the pharmacy and take things to the battery/electronics recycling center and get groceries, so she is now draped over my lap, sighing impatiently when I wiggle too much.

I got an interesting rejection today: the editors -- who are thoughtful editors, editors I like -- felt that the story had switched from SF to fantasy halfway through a rather short story. I didn't think that the story was ever SF, so I was wondering: would you assume that a story set at a scientific research station was SF? Would you find it confusing to have a story with scientist characters turn out to be fantasy? What about programmer characters? Engineer characters?

I'm thinking about the perpetual complaint that I have about Charles de Lint's work and a few others, where everybody is some kind of artist in their fantasy novels. I'm wondering if this is partly because other professions are signaling other genres to people. That would frustrate me immensely, but it'd be good to know if it's actually going on.

And one more thing: I am, as many of you are, sad to hear of the death of Lloyd Alexander. The Kestrel is one of my favorite books in the world, and one of the books most important to what I'm doing now. I loved the Prydain books and the Vesper Holly adventures, but the Westmark trilogy, particularly The Kestrel, hit notes in my heart that nothing else has ever quite found. I'm glad that, from all reports I've heard, Lloyd Alexander had a good death in his old age -- but I was still hoping against hope that there might be one more word from Westmark someday, and now there never will be. Earlier today I asked about musicians and authors who felt like they'd always been a part of your life, and Lloyd Alexander is and will always remain one of those for me.

I am so tired. The house looks like a bombed out laundry and smells like a bakery, and if I didn't do most of my writing on the computer, my desk would be just as much a disaster area. As things stand, I can fix one thing and print another and add a scenelet to another with no scraps of external evidence. But most of what needs doing, in other than the "this event happens now" sense, is done, and most of what isn't done won't be done, so I might as well not worry about it. Right? Of course right.

In some ways I'm still not adjusted to living here. Where we lived in California -- it was the best place we could get with the limitations we had, but it was 20 minutes' drive to the nearest branch of our bank. (There were two at 20 minutes' distance. Nice.) And it wasn't that we'd picked an obscure bank. Our apartment was nearly convenient to a lot of things and actually convenient to none of them, and things were farther apart there. So I was a little stressed when it was 12:55 when I left to run my two small errands: getting gas in the car and depositing a check at the bank. It was 1:10 when I walked back in the door, missions accomplished. Which is reasonable, and it accounted for things not going perfectly efficiently -- there was no open spot at the gas station or in the bank lines when I got to each, so I had to wait at each, and the teller was chatty -- but I find myself figuring too much time for routine errands fairly regularly. Even now, and even though I have a horror of being late and far prefer being early.

I'm noodling with some fun fiction (not to be confused with fan fiction, which is not my thing), and I'm going to try to take a minute to sprawl and just breathe and get warm before I dress for dinner. It was a good idea to wear flannel and jeans to walk the dog, because it is distinctly un-warm here, but it's not going to cut it for the evening. Still: moment of burrowing in the duvet first.

[Poll #955719]

I think I'm the only person I know who likes the spring side of Daylight Savings Time. It puts me closer to synchronization with the rest of my social world, albeit only briefly, until my body adjusts.

Anyway. My writing wisdom of the morning, from reading, is that it is extremely risky to have a prologue that is substantially different from the rest of your book in style, setting, characters, etc. The reader may imprint on the prologue and spend the rest of the book annoyed that you're telling a rather different story now.

On the other hand, the annoyance led to notes for a couple of short stories that I hadn't known were related before, but now I know they are. So that's good.

In another few minutes, markgritter and I are going to go shopping for curtains. I don't know about him, but I'm just thrilled by this prospect. I am beginning to see the up side to indefinite amounts of procrastination. In the house of the future, I will be able to program the windows to go opaque from one direction, or I'll be able to program the nanites to make me curtains overnight out of the Roomba's dustbin.

Of course, then my curtains will smell like hair and dirt and dog treat crumbs. Ah well. These things happen when you leave things to the nanites. So I guess we'll go curtain shopping.

Have been doing getting-ready-to-travel things and life-maintenance things and dog-soothing things and so on. The dog is convinced that there is Something Up. She has been trying to sit directly on me whenever possible, including when I'm at the computer. It is hard to type with a dog pressing her head down on my wrist as hard as she can manage. I don't care that she's small, she's determined!

She also, poor bop, has an ear infection. I'm really glad we have a good groomer who could spot it right away and have the vet swab it right away and have everything go as smoothly as possible...but the dog needs to stop getting sick, is the long and short of this one.

It is finally, finally, finally supposed to snow here...starting tomorrow afternoon and ending Sunday evening. So yes: neatly straddling the time when we're supposed to be flying out. Sigh. This state is like your very own perpetual toddler: you love it, but some days....

I need to rethink my list for the week after our return, I think: one of the reasons I have lists on a weekly basis is to tell me what I don't have to try to get done in a week, because it can wait for next week. It's okay if one or two things carry over from week to week, but if there are five to ten things getting transferred over every single week for months on end, that's a sign that I'm not using the list the way I want to, and I should shift that somehow. If it's okay for these things not to get done in a given week, maybe I should be spreading out how I write down that I want them done in the first place. Some of this has gotten better this week in particular because a lot of longer-term pieces got finished all at once, so I could remove those from the list rather than sighing and moving them to the next list.

Maybe there would be fewer to move to the next list in the first place if there were fewer on the first list, if it wasn't "ack, look at the list of things I'd like to get done this week" but rather "ah, here's something I'd like to get done this week." And with stuff like that, I can always "work ahead." (Some list items do not permit for working ahead. "Call grandparents," for example, is something I want to remember to do every single week. If I do it three times this week -- which I did -- that doesn't mean it's fine to blow them off for a whole fortnight after that. So it doesn't get crossed off the list in advance. They're my grandparents. That's not how my priorities go.)

It occurs to me that I don't really have a list for while we're gone. I mean, I have the beginnings of a schedule, and with it some intentions. (Anyone who hopes to see me in the Bay Area: please contact me if you don't have my cell phone number. It will be a better contact mode than e-mail for anything time-sensitive.) I'm bringing stuff to work on, but I don't have a particular set of goals in mind for the week -- no X thousand words, no finishing Y, no Z chapters of Q. I'm not even bringing things that count as research reading in the near-term. What is this called? Is this what is known as "vacation"? Is this what they call "realistic expectation" and "relaxation"? How very eccentric.

Rejoice, oh, rejoice with me, for I have read my way clear of the stack of periodicals! I have no further periodical reading pending. Until another New Scientist arrives, of course. Quick! Nobody check the mail! This is the first time in months I haven't had an issue of this or that hanging over my head unread.

Now there's just the to-be-read stack. Er. Stacks. But I get fidgety when those get too low anyway.

The piano repairbeing is still here. I don't want her to rush and do a bad job with my piano -- this is the one owned by my great-grandmother -- but I wish that doing a good and thorough job didn't take quite this long.

Well. At least it's been a reasonable time to frost lemon kisses and work on Christmas cards, and when she's gone, I'll get some more work done on Zodiac House. I hope.

It's a good thing International Bonbons and Movie Magazines Month was not meant to be literal, that's what I have to say. I ate a bonbon today (fleur de sel caramels, how I love you!), but it was small, and there were rather more of them left in the package than I thought there ought to be, and I strongly doubt that anyone has been sneaking in and adding chocolates to my stash. (I strongly doubt this because markgritter is out of town and timprov can't drive, and other people don't much have keys to my house. Otherwise I would consider Occam's Razor to strongly support the adding-chocolate notion.)

This month I've read two issues of Subterranean, one of Phantom, and one article from a back issue of Lavender from elisem (because she wrote the article, and because it came up in conversation, albeit scribbled conversation). But what I have on my desk yet is Asimov's, F&SF, two New Scientists, Scientific American, and Martha Stewart Living. (Guess which subscription I didn't buy for myself?) I am so far behind on periodicals. I never get this far behind on periodicals.

What I need is to not add "read periodicals" to my mental to-do list, much less my physical to-do list. They're there for fun. Fun is not a checklist. Fun is not a narrow window on the schedule between washing the dishes and sewing the buttons back on. It ought to be permeable, interleaved with other things, with "and have fun doing it" automatically appended to all sorts of the other things we do.

Which is an interesting connection to a post I'm not ready to make. But soon.

I was looking at things to add to my Amazon list for Christmas. What I wanted was some new yoga and/or Pilates DVDs. I kept running my head into a wall, though: I do not want to sculpt anything. If I did want to sculpt anything, it would be clay or possibly marble, wood, glass, dough, something other than me. I do not want to lose weight. I exercise because my body feels better when I do and because I have enough problems with vertigo and etc. without adding inflexibility, lack of stamina, etc. to them. What I want in a yoga or Pilates DVD is some fun and interesting stuff that keeps me moving and keeps a certain awareness of major muscle groups, so that I don't step wrong all of a sudden and wrench the heck out of my knee or etc. because my back has been really messed up and I never noticed until it needed to respond and couldn't.

None of the DVDs seemed to indicate fun at all. Nor interesting combinations or sequences. Nor...anything at all relevant to me, really. If I really hated some particular body part and wanted it transformed, apparently up to and including my spleen, I could find the right DVD for me. But I don't. Doesn't mean I think I have a perfect body, it means that the concept of some one body being perfect is not one that seems applicable to my life. (If there was such a thing, it would presumably differ from mine substantially: it would produce melanin when that might be useful, and it would be able to see things without wee plastic discs to help, and also it would never, ever fall over. But I don't think they sell DVDs to fix any of those things, so: not relevant.) There are the DVDs extremely focused on gentleness, but I kind of like a good sweat now and then. I just don't want to have to fork over money to someone whose goal is to sell FAT-BLASTERS!!!! to do it, and I can't really tell which of the "inner left thigh morning workout" DVDs might also turn out to be fun. I think this is one of those cases where genre fails someone because what they want is on entirely orthogonal lines to where the genre lines are being drawn.

My dad said, "You just want to have some fun that is funny." Because my dad is cute and has never really de-imprinted from Dr. Seuss. But he's right. (Don't think Pilates exercises are funny? Then you've probably never done my specialty, Poodle-Assisted Pilates. Good thing they say laughter is good for you, because oof.)