There went the morning...

[desperance]

Urgh. Didn't sleep at all well last night, just because I couldn't breathe. Not in an asthmatic way, just so bunged-up with cold. Yuk. (So Barry got to demonstrate his new trick a lot, which is sleeping on top of me; when I'm awake I lie on my back and listen to the radio, largely, which offers him nice resilient unbony stomach to curl up on. So he does. Which I wouldn't mind at all, if (a) I didn't feel so damn unwell and (b) he didn't feel so damn heavy... I'm just not used to cats with gravitas. The girls were four-, five-pounders all their light little lives. Mac might be eight or nine, I guess, but doesn't feel it, he's anti-gravity. Barry is a very solid twelve-pounder, and where he sits, the world bends to accommodate him. In this instance, I bend. Oof.)

So here I have been, dragging myself around all morning and feeling dizzy and not well at all, and utterly plagued by that end-of-novel feeling that I should be Doing Something. I am not short of things to do. But I have been promising myself for months that once the book was finished I would spend some time sorting out the worst of the house; and now I'm there I am of course utterly daunted. Everything that needs done can be broken up into neat little packages, to be sure, but there is almost no package that can be broached until something else has been done first, and so on, and on... And it all becomes too wearing to contemplate, and I'm not well, and and and.

And I just end up defeated, as ever.

But! I have made a start! I have brought a CD player up to the office, because many tasks break down into CD-length packages of time. I have unclogged the wossname, the thingie, sorry, the machine that cuts sheets of paper into many narrow strips - shredder, that's the word. I have unclogged the shredder, and I have sat down to clear that stretch of paper-strewn floor that leads to the corner where I have to dismantle home-build shelving and move the filing cabinet before I can do something about the wallpaper that's peeling off where the roof was leaking before I had it fixed, which I have to do before I can move the desk and build new shelving all along that wall...

So: I am listening to Hejira, and I have sat down and emptied the shredder's last hopperful into a rubbish back, and I have begun to pick up the strewn sheets and sort through them, and suddenly there is Mac pouncing on the Exciting New Thing that is the rustly baggy rubbish bag, and then he is rolling on his back and attacking my hand, and I am giggling and ouching and, um, not really sorting through paper at all, because how can I do that when he's all over it...?

Ahem. So I thought I'd blog him instead, in hopes of boring him into wandering off. Which seems to have happened, so here I go again...

ETA: Mac is now inside the rubbish bag. And Barry is eyeing it in a soon-to-be-pouncy manner: it rustles! It's baggy! It's alive!

Oh, God...

ETA2: The bag is now shredded (cat-claws from inside and out being pretty much as efficient as the wossname). Mac has chased Barry away, and come back. Barry has come back. There has been more pouncing. Rinse and repeat.

Mac is currently nesting, with every intention of sleeping, inside the bag. Which is leaking its contents all over the floor (ie back where it was before, pretty much), while Baz sits on the document-box on my desk and gazes down, with pouncing on his mind.

Rinse and what was it, again...?

Happily, Joni has stopped singing and I can go and get lunch, with a feeling of, well, I dunno really. Not exactly achievement, but...

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

You're making me want to straighten up the house!

...which is probably more indicative of just how much fun typing in copy edits isn't than how much fun cleaning house is...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I was about to cry "You get to type in copy edits? Unfair! They always make me write them longhand, just to discourage me from making too many..." - only then I thought nah, what you mean is you're typing them in on your own final draft version, so that it matches the printed text, aren't you? Which is one of those things that - well, I always have a moment when I think I ought to do it, and I just might be a reformed soul because I actually did do it last time, but...

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

No, actually what I mean is that the way this house does its very final edits, which are actually called author alterations rather than galleys, when you make changes they give you a form to fill out the changes in and you can either hand-write or type it, and I always type it because it's easier to read. And then they take my typed edits and put them into the production document, I guess.

It struck me this time that it would be positive fuckloads easier on everybody if I could in fact just put them into their damned final document, so I'm going to ask if there's some reason I can't be given access to it in the future, and then I would not only have spared them the time to type these things in (after I've done it myself) but I would also, in fact, have one of those "final draft version what matches the printed text" copies, which would make me very very happy. It could, I suppose, be some kind of proprietary document format something or other, but I'm asking. I'd ask this time (now that I've thought of it, which I did this morning) except it's Thanksgiving and nobody's around anyway and by the time they are I'll be done and then it's their problem.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, right. Curious. Haven't come across that before.

Good luck with the asking, but don't count on a yes. I have begged and pleaded before now, to be allowed to type changes in at copy-edit and print out a clean manuscript, which I would then mark up for the printer just as it was before, only that the printer wouldn't have to interpret my scrawly corrections to the text. No one ever lets me do that. Which means there are misinterpretations that I have to correct at proof stage, and then of course the inevitable misinterpretations of those corrections, and hence Mistakes! In the Book! Which I Hate!!

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Not counting on a yes, but asking can't hurt.

I too would be happy to do exactly that in the CE stage. You'd think *everyone* would be happy if authors were willing to do that.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Very cute.

Okay, I have a kind of personal question for you. Where did you get your nose? I got mine from my dad, and I suspect the small amount of Iroquois genes he carried. I don't think the British or Irish genes could account for the hook. (It's not one of those perky little noses, but it quite goes with the rest of my face. In fact I walked out of a plastic surgeon's office when he kept insisting that he would "fix" my nose at the same time he worked on my chin.) I like my nose and always wonder what genetics created other people's noses.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

My nose is my mother's, and I suspect from her father's line before her, as everything else that distinguishes me - my height and my baldness, largely - came from him. I have nothing of my own father in me.

The nose is my most prominent feature, necessarily the first thing people notice. It's quite straight, and quite narrow: not hooked, not Jewish, not Roman, not nothing except big. Outsize, for my face. Where it came from - how an innocently Scottish clanline could be lumbered with such a feature - I don't know. Right now, though, I would cheerfully send it back.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Really? I think it fits you. Looks quite good. But then, I'm not very fond of assembly line noses, or other body parts.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, most times it contents me well enough. Makes self-description easy, when a stranger has to find me in a crowd. Just, at the moment all its little passages are swollen to the point where it's not actually functioning as a nose. Which makes it both prominent and redundant, which is a sorry combination.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

I do hope you feel better soon! I feel rather guilty that I enjoyed this post so much - I do sympathise, but the word-picture you unlocked from your word-hoard is marvellous!

[wishus.livejournal.com]

I too am at home with a cold with an enormous amount of tidying to do before friends arrive. Friends=good! Tidying=ugh!

I think I may have to take a leaf out of your book and put music on, then get on with stuff.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Happily, Joni has stopped singing and I can go and get lunch, with a feeling of, well, I dunno really. Not exactly achievement, but...

What's that expression you can never remember, Chaz?

Actually, in this case I suspect it may be procrastination. Procrastination, thy name is Cat...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, is it my fault if my best intentions are waylaid? Mac is a boomerang; if you throw him away, he comes back with greater force. Bouncing.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I foresee a homage to Lilian Jackson Braun in your future...