The dream of Chazontius

Bleah. There's something infinitely depressing about being still awake at 3am and feeling infinitely far from sleep, when you know that even if you get there eventually yr alarm is still going to wake you at 6am.

Besides, my insomnia disturbs Barry. These chillier nights, he's decided that he will flatter me with his bed-presence after all, and we have a little ritual about it: I lie in bed, and he snuggles up against my side, on the right-hand side of the bed, however close to the edge that takes him. (That's the room side, as against the wall side, and I guess he likes the open access.) Then, through the night, as I move and shift and slide across the bed, he follows. This means, of course, that he gets more and more of the bed, while I get squeezed closer and closer to the wall. Which is fine, if I'm asleep. If I'm awake, as this night - well, I get restless and want to roll back the other way, which means either squishing him or shifting him. Neither of which he's keen on, so he vanishes. And comes back half an hour later, and then I do it all again. I am bad.

Anyway, this night gone: sometime after 3am, I did achieve sleep. Ooh, ten minutes of it. And dreamed: first of Ian Watson (who is a man I'm in awe of, in that intellectually-intimidated kind of way that I can be deeply impressed by people. I have a little list), and then of a cow with its hoof in my groin.

I wonder, could I be feeling, oh, insecure at all...?

Tuesday round-up

It's not noon yet, and I haven't written a damn thing today (see previous post, under 'insomnia' - I didn't make it out of bed till 8.30, and my back hurts, as it often does after a night of unsleeping), but I'm just going to log this and go.

It really hasn't been a good week. I have a plethora of excuses - copy edit, play, sickness, meetings, Lord alone knows what else - but the facts remain:

89,924 / 90,000 (99.9%)

(Y'know, if I'd done the sums before I started this update, I might've paused to write those extra 76 words, just to take me to that putative target. But nah, I don't deserve them.)

In pages, a slightly less fatuous prediction (tho' one I shall still exceed, I fancy):

279 / 300 (93.0%)

So that's 9734 words for the week. And I still have to finish the copy-edit, which is today and tomorrow; and then I'm away to Derby on Thursday, for a Phantoms gig. Back Friday, and with luck there should be some writing-time after that. But no, we do not feel good.

Mind you, harpies, this week. I wasn't expecting the harpies.