Summer Cold

July 27

I've always liked the sound of the phrase "summer cold," but it's not so nice having one -- Thursday afternoon I had the stuffy head and the thumping headache, and Friday I woke with a sore throat to go along with it. Heather's sick, too -- I think she's got it even worse than I do. She called the advice nurse, but she just gave the usual how-to-treat-a-cold suggestions. So we're to rest and drink fluids and so forth, and the nurse suggested we stay home from work and just recuperate, so that's what we did on Friday. Not especially loads of fun, since we were both short-tempered, ill, and cranky.

And of course we had little choice but to go to the old house, scrub things, clean, move stuff, etc. all weekend. Neither one of us have gotten enough sleep lately, and we've been rather stressed, which can't be good for the ol' immune systems. I suppose we'll live, though. Basically we didn't do anything all weekend except work on the old house. It sucks unimaginably much. We'd hoped to finish up today (Sunday), but we didn't. We got a lot done, but there's lots left to do. We have to go back every night this week, probably, and clean, and take the last of our things away. This has been a huge job -- Heather's lived in that house for five years, and it was absolutely crammed to the rafters which her stuff. Just hauling off the junk she wants to get rid of takes hours and hours. The new apartment is absolutely filled with boxes already. We haven't done much for the past three weeks but move, and we're both really frayed, and stressed, and short-tempered. We're medicating ourselves with strawberry popsicles and Bada Bings (major contender for Best New Crack), but what we really need is a weekend off, preferably one when we don't have colds! There's so much writing I want to do... It'll all be over by Friday, though -- our lease at the old place ends on Thursday, so we'll be finished by then, one way or another. Next weekend we're not doing anything but lolling around, drinking fuzzy navels, reading, and (for me, at least) writing some of that sweet, sweet fiction.

Writing-wise, I haven't gotten much done at all, as I said above. I sent three stories out, which entailed hooking up the printer, finding paper, and digging the envelopes out of a box at the bottom of a pile. But I guess it ain't art if you don't suffer for it...

I also attempted to write the intro for "Annabelle's Alphabet", which is the next story in my Featured Author run at Ideomancer -- I could've just copied the story notes from my collection, but I wanted to write something different, and I was tip-tap-typing happily along tonight when I decided I wanted to include what Terri Windling said in her introduction to the story when it was reprinted in the Year's Best. So I went to the living room to pick up my copy of said antho, and found myself facing a tottering pile of boxes. Ah, yes, I recalled then -- I've just moved, and all but seven of the books I own are trapped in cardboard, so I can't look up the intro. I spent some time shifting boxes, hoping to find one labeled more specifically than just "books," but had no luck. It's my own fault. I labeled the boxes, after all. I can look up the introduction tomorrow in my boss's copy at work, though, which is nice -- that wouldn't be possible if I was a waiter or a programmer or something.

Heather and I are singing "Always look on the bright side of your life" a lot lately. Which can be difficult at times. For example, when your sandal breaks, causing you to trip on the concrete steps while carrying a pile of boards which, when assembled, become a bookshelf, but which are, at the moment, just a bunch of boards with splintery bits. The bright side of that is that I only scraped, bruised, and made puffy the inside of my forearm, and didn't actually rip the skin off completely.

It's all about the power of positive thinking. And the concrete steps are painted red anyway, so you hardly notice the blood.

We did take a break from moving to catch a matinee of the pirate movie, though, and it was very good, funny and cool and full of wit and effects that enhanced the story (rather than attempting to replace the story, as is so often the case). Recommended (but then, you've probably heard that already).

Words written since February 1, 2003: 76,300

Words written since last entry:
0. I'm not a writer, I'm a box-carrying golem of some kind. A sweat merchant. Something like that.

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