Tinfoil Rain

November 14

When it rains, it pours molten lead on your unprotected head.

So this morning Heather went in to get a cavity filled. They told her she needed a root canal. There was a cancellation at InterCranialSurgeryLand, so they were able to work on her right away. Anesthetize, scrape, canalify... bill. Her insurance is maxed-out this year, so it cost... lots.

Kee-rist. It's not like we have much in the way of savings, y'all, and that took it all and then some. We have to drop our gym membership and eat ramen and do our damndest to pick up some freelance writing work and sell old clothes and not go to movies and... and.... Kee-rist. Fortunately I've paid for half the engagement ring already, and have enough cash on hand to pay the rest (the ring is ready, by the way, supposedly for real; we pick it up Saturday). We can streamline our life, but it's no damn fun.

We have Xmas bonuses coming (well, probably; these things are always faintly in doubt, right?). I have some decent short-story money on its way. This was all going to be our cushion, help in paying down debt, etc., but now it's just going toward filling up immediate holes. This isn't the end of Heather's dental work, either, y'all.

So now we can't get her car fixed, which is a bummer, but not fatal (well, unless it stalls at an inopportune time [hollow laugh]). And all we get for Xmas is Heather's two back teeth...

This wouldn't be so bad by itself, but paired with my car's collapse, it's nearabout the shittiest week ever here in the Prattshaw house. And then there's the $400 of grad school applications to pay for... it's just all adding up.

And yet, we're in pretty good spirits. Heather's teeth won't hurt her so much anymore. We can still afford to put out our chapbook (hell, it's economical, really, since that's going to be the Xmas present for many of our friends and relatives). We'll run up some more credit card debt, but that's the American way. We have each other, and we'll get by; this would be infinitely more difficult if either of us were all alone.

Lots of good reading aroundabout lately. The Dark Terrors antho, which I'm reviewing. Brian Hodge's brilliant hardcover novella El Dia De Los Muertos, perhaps the best horror story I've read all year (it doesn't hurt that it does some amazing things with Aztec mythology, one of my current fascinations). We got Best of the Rest 3 (whoo!), which I get to read soon, and LCRW (I've read Ben Rosenbaum's distinctly Ben-and-Zen-like story "Fig" and David Moles's marvelous poem). I got a collection to review for SFreader, but I don't know if it's good or not yet. We have Susan Marie's copy of Say... Was That a Kiss to peruse for a few days (my contrib copy should be coming soon). I read Greg's story, "Demon, Star, Alien, Cat", and it rocks the most. Susan brought me a copy of Alan De Niro's chapbook atari ecologues, which rules; I'm reviewing it for Star*Line.

Good words. Life is hard, but art is good, and having good art makes life less hard.

In ten years, I won't remember the financial hardships of this winter, but I will still remember this good work, some of it done by people I'm honored to call my friends, and really, that's what matters.

It's also been a good week, in some ways. Tired of waiting for the hippies to finish our ring, I decided to propose to Heather anyway. I made her a ring of tinfoil (as is the tradition, after all), with a flower-like embellishment in lieu of a stone, and knelt, and proposed, and she said yes. I'll propose again, in a more baroque and formal fashion, later, but I wanted to be able to call her my fiancée now; and I can.

I'll remember that in ten years, too, when the taste of ramen is long-faded...

Got a busy weekend ahead. Work to do on Star*Line, and Rangergirl, and three reviews to write (four, counting the poetry review, but it'll be short). I'm looking forward to it. I've been cranking away at work, since we have to finish the issue tomorrow (Thanksgiving bumped up our schedule). Exhausting days. Holly's been kind enough to let me borrow her zoomygood car to drive to work, in exchange for gas money and for me checking her oil, which seems more than fair. We've had a run of bad luck, but there are a lot of supportive people looking out for us, loving us, helping us, giving us good words to read.

Keep it up, guys. Y'all are the only thing keeping the leaden rain from falling on us.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 176,200

Words written since last entry:
Revising, and wrote a collaborative poem with Heather; call it 100 words.

Send us whatever you think we'd like.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

We are black holes of need; fill us.