Thoughtlets

July 22

The good people at Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet rejected my "In a Glass Casket". But that's okay. There are lots of places yet for it to go. And Gavin sent a nice note. They're drowning in submissions, he says, so if they take a long time to answer, don't fret.

Sometimes I think that we will always be moving from one apartment to the next.

Hell is a dirty bathroom, in a house where you don't even live anymore, that you still have to clean.

Zanzibar is on antibiotics. We hope and pray that the antibiotics are the source of his horrible nose-hair-searing nasty smelly cat farts. If so, they should subside when he's done with his medication. If not... we'll sing "Smelly Cat" very often, I suppose.

There are, of course, ants in the new apartment. They found our moving-day pizza boxes, which prompted me to find our trash can, to remove the temptation. So, in a way, the ants helped me. Sure.

Marzipan is very shy all day long, and all evening, too, but come bed time, she's the original all-clawing all-dancing all-sneezing all-pouncing party machine. The past two nights we've had to give up and put her in the closet, which is where her litterbox and sleepy-place are anyway. Unfortunately, she's quite the little escape artist.

Playing with the kittens for an hour is like having years of very successful therapy, but condensed. They're filling the house with love. In addition to the smell of stinky noisome cat farts.

We realized yesterday that we rented a one-day new release on DVD last week, and never returned it. We rented it while we were still at the old house. We can only assume it's in a box, here, somewhere. Or so we hope. The late fees are going to be astronomical. (That's right. Actually measured in AUs.) Of course, now that we've moved, we'll probably never go to that video store again, and it's not a chain, so...

I'm almost done with Caitlín Kiernan's Low Red Moon. It's lovely. That makes three things to review for next month (that, plus 13 Horrors, plus The Harvest). When will I have time to write these reviews? Oh, the mind boggles.

California Pizza Kitchen little frozen personal pizzas? They're almost unimaginably good. Easily the best frozen pizzas I've ever eaten, and I've eaten a lot.

We went to the nice Safeway, which is far nicer than the ghetto Albertson's, and not much farther away. I think it shall be our grocery store from now on. It was very very un-busy, compared to what we're used to at the big one we use to frequent. Though there was still a very angry impatient yuppie who was about to chew his own face off in frustration at the fact that he had to wait in line for five minutes, and loudly shared his annoyance with all of us. After he left, Heather and I and the cashier all made fun of him. Whoo. Good times.

This weekend we do the big crazy clean-a-thon at the old place, and then we should be pretty much done over there, and ready to move fully into the new phase of our life, here at the new place. We thought it would be easier, moving in bits and pieces like this; that it would be less stressful. But, oh, we're fools. Moving in a single weekend is hellishly stressful, yes, but when you're done, you're done! Whereas I feel like we're in purgatory or something, day after day of moving a little at a time, having to go back to the old place (which is a dirty, trash-strewn set from a low-budget surrealis movie at this point) every afternoon. We so very much want to be done, but we don't have time to do it in one fell swoop, or the inclination to do so after a full day at the day jobs. But, anyway. Just a few more days. This time next week, we should be done, and then we can start putting our new house in order. We have a functional kitchen now (with bonus ants!), and I unpacked DVDs and videos tonight, and the stereo is hooked up, and the printer (though the paper is all buried under boxes, and we have no envelopes or stamps to mail manuscripts with anyway, since the mail center is still at the old house). We're crawling toward comfort. And our cozy living room is very nice, despite the monoliths of boxes everywhere.

I really need to get some writing done. I get cranky when I don't write. I'm starting to get cranky. (You wouldn't like me when I'm cranky. Heh. Heather sure doesn't.) Not sure what I'm going to work on, though. Rangergirl edits, most likely, since there are new scenes to be done, and that should fulfill my desire to get some new words written down. It'll be nice to write those characters again, too, have them walking on the beach, encountering the ruins of sandcastles, and nastier things... They should be good scenes.

Ah, there. I just made the office a touch more liveable. I brought a lamp in here, so we don't have to depend on the horrid overhead light, and I got my Realms illustrations on the wall -- with a blank space left for the "Romanticore" illustration, which should be along sometime. That's some pretty inspiring shit to look at when you're writing, you know? Pictures that artists drew based on your work. Wow. I love this job.

I think the cause of my present stress, the keening anxiety that lives in the back of my head, really is because I feel like a man of two worlds at the moment. I'm still carpooling with a co-worker until the end of the month, because she paid me gas money for this month already, and I said I would, but that means I have to drive back to my old neighborhood to pick her up. Heather and I haven't adjusted to the fact that she has to get a ride to the BART station now, when she could just walk before. We always left at about the same time anyway, so it's not a problem, it just means we have to be ready to go a bit earlier than before, and we haven't adjusted yet. I'm also still uncomfortable in the new place -- it doesn't feel like my house yet, I'm not used to the noises and the creaks and the way the light falls, and so I'm not sleeping well (of course, I've only slept here three nights so far, so that's not surprising). Once things get settled, I think I'm going to be very happy and productive here. I'm already enjoying it being just-the-two-of-us, and all the little casual comforts that entails. Mmm. But we're both very ready to be finished with the whole moving process...

Words written since February 1, 2003: 76,000

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