While trying to clean up the copy-edits. Jane’s been over it, I’ve been over it, Jane went over the front end and read; we both agree that the c/e first section has to be fixed and fixed with some major work to get back to where we were before we tried to follow the suggestions made (as it turns out, in a bit of confusion), so I have stopped work on the Bren book to sit by Jane as she re-edits the chapter. I read a book, the not-too-deep novelization of Guild Wars, the game we both play, and wait until Jane wants to read her fix aloud. This is the best way to get back to where we were without totally tossing out the c/e’s and the designer’s work. It’s a real headache.
While we were gone we had to trust the pond to just leaving the back porchlight on, and we invested in some advanced tech critter-specific sound repellant, which I have now set up. Next is to turn out the light and see if this works.
The post implanting went pretty well. Some jaw soreness, just from the length of the procedure. Not awful at all, if you have a good dentist, and this one is.
We’re just real tired, real sore from too many potatoes while we were on the road, and needing to drop some weight. So off we go on another diet, this one just dedicated to food excepting potatoes, and more balance, less of everything else. Typical breakfast: a boiled egg, a half an English muffin ‘buttered’ with mayo, a slice of fruit or half a small banana, and a tablespoon of cottage cheese. Typical lunch, half a piece of 20-grain toast, a tablespoon of peanut butter, slice of fruit. Typical supper: 3 meatballs, small serving spaghetti with tablespoon of sauce; serving of green beans. Measurement. Restraint. Balance. LESS. And no potatoes.
Both of us are just real tired from the whole year. We’re not going to Worldcon. There’s no way we’d have the energy if somebody handed us first-class tickets and a suite at the Ritz. We just haven’t got it, and we’ve got the c/e to deal with and a book to finish and another to start.
Dear CJ and Jane, the weather here is going to be extreme today and the next couple of days so please stay out of the sun and smoke. We are in a red-flag situation now and on alert. Take good care and great luck with the c/e.
Hang in there ladies. We are over halfway through this annus horribilis year with a gods unfortunate “8” in it. Uphill slog or not, we will get through it.
Rest, please. 🙂 And have fun with the editing and redrafting the section.
Either I missed a delivery or the delivery guy did, today. Hoping it arrives tomorrow. Waited all day while doing other stuff. Frustrating.
I’m tired from housecleaning, prep before pest control, no word from the guy this week. Looks like I’ll have to remind the office next week, if I don’t hear anything tomorrow.
However, this will mean the two cats and I have a one or two night stay in a pet-friendly hotel while the apt. is (ugh) fumigated. (Most necessary.) There are times one thinks that it could be convenient to vent a compartment to space, for such pest control. (Haha!)
Otherwise, things are way too dull and same-old around here. Have “almost met” a couple of neighbors a couple of times; meaning, well, not actually introduced each other nor really met. :-/ Maybe I’ll have better luck this weekend.
Telling myself I’m working towards a better life, but would like to see it and enjoy it more.
However, intermittent and slow work on fonts / font ideas is going OK, just slowly. Just…creatively and personally (emotional and social life)…I want things to be better. I feel too alone and cramped. It’s been a difficult week in that regard, and yet I should be happier at what progress is happening. I feel at loose ends.
In between more housework / cleaning, I expect to watch movies / episodes and read some, as a way to escape, over the weekend. — I plan to take my Spanish textbook, a couple of Cherryh books, and my Kindle Fire tablet for the hotel stay, and possibly my ancient laptop, still to be updated, in case. If I’m going to have a necessarily enforced vacation, then I’m going to enjoy it darn it.
No idyllic companion has fallen from the sky into my lap, darn it. As unlikely as it is for that to ever happen, well, that’s one of the things I’m missing. My younger self would have possibly been scandalized, but I think did understand from a different perspective.
So, yup, frustrated here, and not much immediate way to expect things to change in the way that I’d want. — Sorry, everyone, if it feels like I’m worrying and yammering for no purpose, or to no one else’s improved feelings. Just..I wish things would improve here. In one sense, they’re perking along OK. In another, no change. So…bleh, frustrated.
I hope the rest of you are doing better!
Internet dating is a thing, even for older people, people with disabilities, etc. Some reasonable caution and common sense is necessary, but many people have met online and ended up in successful relationships.
Well that was odd. My first comment got eaten by a bad request.
We have spent the previous 6 Sundays remodeling the upstairs office at DH’s shop, in the hopes of eventually turning it into a rentable teaching and conference center. We have ripped out questionable wiring and non load bearing walls, relaid a subfloor, and skim coated and smoothed the remaining badly finished walls. Next comes painting the ceiling and walls, new Pergo flooring, new lights, fans, and a/c unit, and trim. We dragooned all our gamer friends into helping, because we could also use it as a gaming suite. I have personally overseen organizing all this, and painted all the trim pieces. Ow.
And today stuck at home with a bout of food poisoning. Double ugh. I hope it goes away by tomorrow; I have too much to do.
Ugh, indeed!
I think the diet has promise. At least it’s gotten rid of the weight we gained on the trip and we’re back to where we should have started, which is ‘real’ weight and will be slower to come of.
BCS, GreenWyvern has an idea. Jane and I met by correspondence, all those years ago. Met face to face at a convention. Kept corresponding. Met at another convention. Began phone-calling…
Did I mention Jane and I locked ourselves out of the house AGAIN? Our heroic carpenter friend drove 20 miles and back again to rescue us. I drove to Ace and copied keys, against a repeat.
Do you have a trusted neighbor you could leave a key with? Otherwise, Tommie’s suggestions for a hidden emergency key bear merit. The only good thing is that hopefully it wasn’t raining (or snowing!!), you didn’t have to contend with an annoying raccoon, and didn’t break a window.
Hmm, maybe offer a tradeoff with the neighbor. You hide your key in an accessible place on their property, and they hide their key ditto on yours. That way even if the keys get found, they still won’t fit the obvious locks.
BCS, indeed. We have a number of long distance friends online that we only see rarely. Who knows if one will blossom?
Sorry to hear the two of you won’t be at Worldcon, but rest assured I will mention Alliance Rising every chance I get. Take care of yourselves.
Cup hook where the trolls live? Glove box? Buried amid the roses?
Oh, geez, the key. I think, in my entire adult life, I’ve only gone outside without my key a handful of times, and I never leave my home without my keys and ID. Ingrained since Kindergarten, even though my mom’s art shop was right next door to our house, and after school, I stayed at the shop with her. That one rule actually worked well. — Haha, however, it does not help if you discover, as I did once at my old house, that a front door lock or back door lock have stopped working with their keys. Oh, that was not fun. Lucky I could get in once, and the other time, had my cell phone, so I could call a locksmith.
What about an ornamental dragon or house elf or some such fantastical beast as seems befitting the household? 😀 The key could be in or near it, or it could simply be decoration with the key safely elsewhere. (I dunno, I just had this very nice image of some critter or humanoid guarding the front or back door. Heheh. Or a droid? Hmm. Too bad I can’t do that here. Maybe if/when I have my own home again. But a banner or something for the front and back window might help guests (or myself) locate me as needed.)
—–
Online friends and online dating — Hmm, I don’t know. I do have online friends (mostly in SF&F fan communities these days), but not a lot of messaging back and forth these days. I have not tried online dating and am kinda nervous about it. — The main reasons I’m gunshy are (of course) personal and idiosyncratic, or maybe they’re just excuses. (I seem to have some real blockage(s) regarding potential love life. Wish those would resolve themselves.) — A few years back, before and after I’d first come out, I had volunteered online, and had friends / contacts that way. I was especially close with one pair, but things changed after one of the pair passed away, and I reacted as if I’d lost a real-life best friend, or platonic love, with so much invested in the friendship that it was as if I’d had a breakup of a non-platonic nature. (At least consciously, it was a close best friendship, to me, even though we’d never more than text-messaged.) I reacted badly, probably also because it was during and after my grandmother’s illness. I hadn’t realized how much I’d emotionally invested in the friendship. And as a result, there was a falling out, not from my side, with the others I volunteered with. Oh, it was not good, and with other things going on, it made me severely doubt what I knew of friendship, myself, others. It took a long time to put that back into perspective. (And along with it, I came to wonder how truthful the friend had been; though others said they believed him and his partner.) — I will never know what to make of it, really. One of those things you think at the time are great, and then it turns into something you later don’t know what to make of. (I have ended up hoping it was indeed truthful and the good friendship I thought, and that the breakup was just inevitable change from the surviving partner’s viewpoint.)
And, well, it goes towards the other point, being that I’m still on the romantic side, and tend to put my heart into things, maybe too quickly or not carefully enough? And yet I have never had a love relationship, just best friendships and adolescent crushes that didn’t go anywhere. (And one that went bad early on, with a classmate.) — So I’ve always had this dichotomy going on with my love life or sexual orientation, and never had it resolve in a positive, successful way. I long for that.
I also worry inside that I’ve been alone so long that I could be prone to over-investing, jumping in too quickly or confusing early infatuation with true love, when the other guy might not feel that way. (Aside from generally being too indepdent-minded for my own good sometimes, I think this is why I haven’t looked for a roommate; worried I might get confused on the nature of the relationship, when he wouldn’t want that.) — Yes, maybe I’m just skittish and making excuses and presuming negatives instead of welcoming positives. — I would like to think I read other people mostly OK, but I get myself very mixed up over…myself. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Welcome to my inner life. Haha. — I do feel that anyone who liked me enough to be a roommate or best friend, or definitely for any kind of longer-term relationship (love) would have to be pretty special to put up with me right now. Trying to work on that. Maybe it’s a kind of “Gordian knot – chimaera” that only appears to be a problem, and melts away if it’s confronted rightly? Meh.
Be it noted: I have been mulling over my comment since I made it, even wondering if I should’ve posted it at all (and bothered people with it), except that yes, that’s how I genuinely felt then, and is too often how I feel. I very much don’t want to be so alone, and at this point in life, not having a roommate, best friend, or a special someone (partner, boyfriend) to share my life with, just gets o me at times. I have also wondered if, now that my situation is not greatly stable, but more so than it was, and appears to be so for a while — If maybe calling up the counselor / therapist I’d been to for about a year after coming out, would be a good idea again. — I feel like I was mostly well adjusted back in high school, and that during college and into my adult life, and with things piling on, often outside of my control, since then, that there’s a lot built up that I need to get through, get past. I want a good life again, with friends and someone to love in it. I know that if I’m out there dating / whatever, I’m likely to have some not-so-perfect relationships before / if ever, I find the right one. But I don’t like feeling like maybe my chances to find someone are long past. Not when I can reasonably expect some 12 to 50 more years of life, depending on whose gene set I take after most, or random life circumstances. I’ve made it this far, so I think I’m OK in that regard, and my health is better than my parents were, and most people in my family, both sides, live into their 90’s. So 40 to 50 more years could be possible. And y’know, that’s too long not to have some good relationships, of any kinds. I need those. I want those.
I don’t know how it is for others, straight or not so straight, but hey, I’m 52, and it has occurred to me that it’s not as likely for me to find someone compatible who’s around my age. Yet, er, I’d like someone younger. I feel pretty young at heart, despite the baggage running around in my head. My better side would like to think so. I know relationships work in which one partner is 10 or 15 years younger or older than the other. (My dad’s parents, for instance, and two other couples’ second marriages were well suited for each other, and had an age gap like that.) So maybe I shouldn’t feel like it’s unlikely to find a match for me.
In person, I have never been sure how to go from, “hey, we’re friends” to “hey, we’re boyfriends / partners.” Heh, that very basic thing of how to determine if a friend, uh, is gay, likes guys, and then if he likes me, I have never quite figured out. (Yes, being out, having to come out to people periodically, should help. But it’s still fraught with leftovers from teenage fumbling towards anything, to figure out.
So, yeah, I’m a mass of anxieties, here, LOL. Er, and yet, yeah, these days, I can admit I really want the emotional and the physical affection of a relationship. And I also want a better network of close friends, so there’s not that to contend with or confuse matters. So…lots to work on.
CJ and Jane — Y’all have a successful long-term relationship, as friends and more, and I look up to that. My parents had a very good relationship as best friends and loves, which in most ways I still look up to as a model of how to get along together. I really, really appreciate your advice, and frankly, I could probably use more advice. I somehow need to get from zero to out there dating and in a relationship and then into a good long-term relationship, when I’m basically starting from “it’s a theoretical concept with too little personal (or good) experience to work from.”
And — Sincerely, thanks to everyone for taking the time to comment and try to help. That has become rare for me lately. I deeply appreciate it. Kinda didn’t expect it. I liked, but was conflicted by, GreenWyvern’s kind comment, due to what I’ve just said above, not so great experiences leaving me with mixed feelings about online dating or in-person attempts to get to know people, to date. But that comment made me think, off and on, about it, which I needed. So thanks, all of you.
How the heck is it that we can grow up believing and being taught one way, so that we internalize it more than we even know, and yet our own inner feelings also conflict with that and tell us our feelings feel right to us, would give us love and joy, if only we could have that with someone? How is it that in our culture (English-speaking, American, or most of the Western world at present) that something so basic as love can be looked at as wrong on such a deep level? Or how is it that we have a culture so riddled with that phobia, that kids, adolescents, adults, can go through life where one group cannot simply express any attraction or affection for another person, without it being a major problem to overcome, while other people (straight folks) can express that to anyone they like at nearly any time, with no problems expected from it ever, simply finding someone else if the other person doesn’t feel the same? Heck, even in our religious communities, people will always happily ask a young guy who he likes, if he has a girlfriend, and expect he does or will soon, and the same for the young ladies; and yet never, ever once can it occur to anyone that it might be OK to inquire nicely if perhaps that young fellow might wish there were some nice young guy to be with, a boyfriend, someone he’d like, or suggest someone to him. (Haha, sorry, personal experience from church life, there, all through high school and college. And back then, I could not have dared to tell any of those nice folks that. And no, if it ever occurred to any of them that I hadn’t been dating girls was, ah, that I would’ve liked guys instead, and for them to let me know they’d be fine with me if that were so… no one ever said so in any way that got through to me. Not closest friends and not family or church family. :-/ I might have become a jittering mess of anxiety if someone had, and yet it might have been a great relief. I am not sure the general advice to wait and let the person come out to you, is always the best advice for every case. I think some of us could use a gentle nudge that it’s OK, if so.) Just grumbling, I guess. I just wish our (American) (or Western) culture was not so badly hung up on this. I have thought lately, why is it that guys in our culture get so often so very aggravated about this? If some guy likes you so much that he loves you, or would even want to share physical affection (mild or serious), then well, why couldn’t that be a great compliment to the guy intended? Yet most guys are brought up that it’s unacceptable, intolerable. And if you happen to be the kind of guy who does like some guy friend, that can make it awfully difficult to find a guy who’d like you back. (Somehow, many guys and girls who are not straight still do find someone.) But that it is an obstacle to overcome, sure is vexing. I wish it could be better. — And yes, I grew up in a very religious family. I knew of nothing about anything positive or about translation issues, historical differences of opinion, until the internet came along. This, in a family that valued study and personal interpretation and discussion with others, on religious ideas, in order to be more faithful. In other words, yes, I know the religious and secular reasons people object, and only later knew that anyone might be accepting. — That, too, enters into my thoughts and feelings and my frustration with how our culture is, or my place within (or outside of) it. — And despite my personal doubts and frustrations, I still do understand and value that others do have different opinions on the subject of religious faith, or of being other than straight.
I am not sure that my college self could have dared voice such things or put them in writing. Probably not. My high school self, however, stood up and spoke up a few times, not always with much forethought, but with conviction, in defense of friends. It would take later years to get past things enough to come out and begin to heal some. I think it’s obvious I’m still unlearning or relearning, and still too stuck when I don’t want to be. Grr. I need to be better about this. Too much still meandering around in the wilderness.
BCS, you are at least looking for something that is very a distinct culture. I suggest you Google [the nearest major city] lgbt and see if there’s something out there you could get involved with.