I get regularly mistaken for being in my 30’s, and sometimes even younger, but truth be told I’m looking 45 in the face. And as such I’ve got a pretty damned good idea at this point of my nature and what I’m likely to do in any given year–so making resolutions I know I’ll never keep seems a rather silly way to start off a new year.
Now, goals, on the other hand, that I can do. So here’s a roundup of what I hope to accomplish in the forthcoming year.
First and foremost: write Victory of the Hawk. I have a hard deadline for this, and this time, I’m going to damn well hit the thing and not give my poor editor gray hairs. Plus it’ll be supremely satisfying to finish up the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, which has after all been rattling around in my head since 1998.
Second and just as foremost: release Bone Walker, DAMMIT. Ideally before Vengeance of the Hunter drops.
Third: Finish up everything else owed to Kickstarter backers. This means three shorter novella-length pieces as well as the soundtrack.
Fourth: I know better at this point to say I’ll avoid medical drama. I’ve had too much of it in my life. But what I can do as a goal is to be in charge of the aspects of my health that are in my control, both mental and physical. Which includes doing what I can to stay healthy, and if I drop weight, bonus–but also not to stress out too much if I don’t drop the weight I’d ideally like to drop. Because I think everybody on the Internet knows at this point that the hard part may be losing the weight, but the even harder part is keeping it off.
Fifth: If SOMEBODY IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET (ohnoez!), remind myself that everybody will be better off if I just do not, repeat, DO NOT engage. Nobody needs that.
Sixth: Play music! And stuff as many Quebecois tunes into my head as possible. And go play them at session!
Seventh: Keep working on my French and start making a dent in the small collection of French-language novels I have acquired. Especially the Quebec SF/F ones.
Eighth: Help my fellow Carina authors spread the word about their books.
Ninth: Cuddle my spouse, pet the cats, and in general, try to maintain a good outlook on life.
Yeah, I think that’ll do nicely. So yeah. Hey there, 2014, bonjour! Comment ça va? C’mon over here and have a cup of tea with me and let’s talk about getting these things done.
And in the meantime, my post on how to make cake vodka milkshakes remains one of the highest-traffic posts on my site. Rightfully so. Because goddamn, people, cake vodka milkshakes.
This is another one of those posts you don’t need to read if you don’t know me personally, but which I’m sharing on the off chance that it might be beneficial to other women who have to go through the same thing.
The general theme of this post is “surgically-induced menopause sucks” (punctuated, if you will, by Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon bellowing “WHAT A DAMN NUISANCE!”). Medical things about my girl parts behind the fold.
Et maintenant, une p’tite histoire, pour pratiquer mon français. Plusieurs de mes amis peuvent reconnaître cette histoire, parce que j’ai raconté cette histoire avant en anglais. Comme toujours, je vous invite tous à me dire où je fais des erreurs dans ma grammaire!
Mon père a dit toujours à moi que pendant mon enfance, parmi mes premières mots ont été, “Jouez plus d’Elvis, Papa!” C’est plausible, ça. J’ai beaucoup de mémoires d’écoutant des disques de Elvis Presley avec lui, et j’ai vraiment adoré.
D’autre part, ceci était le même père que dit à moi que je fis des sons comme un canard devant j’ai appris à parler.
Duck-Obsessed Little Blonde Kid
Il a dit qu’il et ses frères ont aimé dire à moi, “Les chasseurs de canards viennent!” Ils faisaient semblant de viser fusils sur moi et faire des bruits BANG. Et moi, j’ai ri beaucoup et s’enfuis à travers la chambre.
Entre-temp, ma mère a été là, et elle insistait très fortement, “MA FILLE NE FAIT DES BRUITS DE CANARD.”
Et moi, j’ai dit, “Coin-coin!”
En 2001 mon père a décedé, et j’ai pris l’avion au Kentucky pour les funérailles. Ma famille s’est réunie à la maison de mon frère. J’étais là dans la cuisine de mon frère, et mon oncle Larry, je n’avais pas vu depuis quinze ans, entra.
Le premiere chose qu’il a me dit a été, “Sais-tu que tu ressembles exactement ta mère?”
Et le deuxiemes chose qu’il a me dit? “Sais-tu que tu as fait des bruits de canard quand tu as été un enfant?”
Aux funérailles, mon autre oncle Marion est venu sur moi. Il a dit aussi à moi, “Sais-tu que tu as fait des bruits de canard quand tu as été un enfant?” Et chaque fois que j’ai pleuré durant les funérailles, il se pencha vers moi et a dit, “Coin-coin!”
Ceci, mes amis d’Internet, est ma histoire de canards!
Internets! This past August I promised you that if Faerie Blood cracked 300 sales, I would dye my hair. And now, since that milestone was reached, today I have made good on my promise!
This is the second time I’ve ever had my hair colored, ever, and getting it professionally done was a big change from the one time we did it back in Kentucky with a home coloring kit. That was a weird strawberry blonde color that ultimately didn’t look quite natural on me, but it looked like it should have been natural on somebody. I figure if I’m going to put weird colors on my head, screw it, go with colors you just aren’t going to find in nature. :D
Blue and green were my colors of choice, as those are my two favorite colors, and the stylist agreed that they’d work well with my coloring. I got the work done by Jade at Scream Salon in downtown Seattle–the same woman who does Dara’s vivid fire-engine red. Jade was very amused by the contrast between Dara having a “warm” color and me rocking the “cool” tones, though, you can make a real strong argument for the shades of blue and green we selected being very warm.
I chose to do a few different shades, with highlight-type blocks hiding underneath my actual hair color. This seemed easier on my hair, and also avoids the problem of my roots growing out and therefore losing the color. Plus, having bits of brilliant color lurking in my otherwise blonde hair seemed to fit me well personality-wise. So now, depending on which angle you look at me from, you’ll get different bits of color!
Jade used bleach on the bits of my hair that she colored, and used the second lowest amount necessary just because my hair’s pretty pale to begin with–and I’m starting to go gray in front anyway. Which meant that when the bleaching was done, parts of my hair were lighter than it’s been since I was a little kid! And it also means that the bits of my hair that’ve gone gray in front turned into some neat highlights against the added color. Jade said as well that this is the brightest she’s seen the colors. My hair apparently took to this really well.
This was huge fun, and it’ll be neat to see how the color changes and fades. I may decide to keep doing this, I dunno yet. Paul says that if I do I should totally rock this brilliant dark blue that’s lurking on the right side of my head.
So here’s some of the after shots! This one shows the colors being kind of subtle:
You’d think, looking at that, that I had hardly any color at all. But you’d be WRONG.
And this one’s my favorite. You can see bits of the blue AND the green:
EDITING TO ADD 1/3/2019: I had to move the pics off of Flickr, so now they’re on annathepiper.org. The links in this post have been changed accordingly.
It’s now two weeks to the day after my surgery, and at this point I’m feeling almost normal again–for values of “almost” meaning, my energy’s still a little wonky, and also, I think I may be beginning to feel the effects of not having any ovaries anymore.
We received not one, not two, but three packages yesterday, all of which deserve some shoutouts.
First of all, thank you to Scott in Kentucky who sent Dara and me a couple of pretty necklaces that he got from a vendor at a flea market local to him. The stones, he tells us, are unakite, and according to the vendor’s usual pagan/New-Age customers, they are intended for healing. Dara and I could use some healing, and this was a very sweet gesture on Scott’s part.
Unakite Necklace
Secondly, Tiny!Flute has arrived! I am chagrined to discover that the current state of my healing abdomen pretty much dictates that I can’t carry coherent notes more than a few measures at a time so I can’t actually reasonably play this little guy yet. But quick experimentation suggests that he’s got a REAL nice voice on him. Dara tried him as well and smiled and said that he sounds like Popcorn. (Popcorn, y’all may remember, is the bamboo flute Dara lost when we lost her backpack on the way down to Oregon.)
Here is a pic of the new Tiny!Flute next to Rossignolet, for size comparison. Rossignolet is 15 5/8″ in length; the new one is 12 5/8″. Put another way, Rossignolet is just a bit longer than my forearm, while the new flute is just a bit shorter.
Little Flute, Littler Flute
Last but most assuredly not least, my sister’s little girl made a special point of picking out a stuffed animal from her very own personal collection and sent it to Dara and me, after learning from her mommy that we’d both been not feeling very well lately! This is hands down the most adorable thing that has happened to me all year, and so I made a point of asking my sister to ask her daughter what the giraffe’s name was. Because if you’re going to have a giraffe come to live with you in your house, it’s VERY IMPORTANT to address the giraffe by the proper name!
And so, Internets, I’d like to introduce you all to Fluffy the Giraffe, now joining the Murkworks household.
I’ve been very sleepy a lot for the past seven days, as you’d expect with a lot of Percocet in my system. Percocet also kicks my ass harder than Vicodin does–for a lot of my previous medical crap I’ve had, I’ve had Vicodin rather than Percocet, and I’m pretty sure I have to go clear back to when I broke my arm for the last time I was on Percocet. This stuff makes me have very weird, very intense dreams, and sometimes sensory hallucinations as well. I get into a half-dreaming state dozing off, and imagine things like people coughing outside, or somebody tapping my shoulder, or the cats making prolonged, siren-like whining noises.
The dreams have been weird, too. This morning’s involved my dreaming I was Liv Tyler, the actress who played Arwen in The Lord of the Rings, only this was on the set of The Hobbit. (Note: Liv Tyler is not actually in the Hobbit movies, but this was dream logic at work here.) Dream-me (as Liv) was on my way to a scene, only I came across one of the actors playing one of the hobbits in the movie. Somebody had attacked him and stuffed him into the bottom of a remote-controlled barrel on wheels that was out of control on the set. I had to retrieve the poor guy–he was a little person, actually hobbit-sized, as opposed to a more typically-sized actor being shrunk down via CGI for the role–and get him to security. And then get to my scene.
I remember that the set was laid out bizarrely like a cross between a theme park and bits of the Harrison Hot Springs resort that we were in this past July. And that I had to work my way back around to the front of the grounds and go through a VIP line to show them my credentials and demonstrate that I was, in fact, one of the cast. Which is the last thing I remember before I woke up.
So hi yeah, this is my brain on Percocet.
Not too much pain to deal with, thankfully. I’m sure most of this has to do with the aforementioned Percocet, though there are bits of me suggesting that they’re still tender enough that once I slack off on the painkillers, they’re going to be crankier at me. Which suggests that I’m probably going to need at least one more round of pain meds to finish up recovering; this is consistent with my recovery patterns with previous medical adventures.
Also, working from home was the exact correct plan here. I’m getting coherent enough that I can actually accomplish stuff on the computer but I am not physically up to my usual commute patterns of bus + four miles of walking in a day. I’m barely managing to make it through a full day without needing a long nap in mid-afternoon, and even with a long nap, I’m going to bed rather earlier than is normal for me as well.
Still not letting George on the lap, either, which bemuses the poor kitty. But he’s 14 pounds of cat and periodically pointy on five of his six ends, so if he gets on the lap at all right now, it’s with the buffer of the largest pillow we have in the house.
I have at least gotten to the point where I can work from home and will be working on automation updates for my team this week. And I’ve also managed to do a lot of operating system upgrades on my personal computers as well as on my work laptop. Put Mavericks on my main Mac laptop, and it did not explode, so I figure this is an accomplishment on my part.
Session happened this past Wednesday and my session peeps actually played a song for me. (heart) They did “La Fée des Dents”, which I’ve posted about before, being partial to that one as one of the ones I can actually play. Looking forward to having enough physical strength back so I can actually stand to play my various flutes. Not too sanguine about wanting to strain my stomach with necessary breath control quite yet. But I do have the small carbon fiber flute on the way! Hope to be able to show y’all pics of that real soon.
Be another couple weeks before I can start pulling words out of my brain again, but starting in December, come hell or high water, I will be editing Bone Walker. And also starting planning for Victory of the Hawk. Somewhere in there will be a copyedit round on Vengeance of the Hunter, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to show y’all some cover art for that.
More news as it happens, and as I continue to get my brain back.
As pretty much expected, I was at Evergreen only from yesterday morning until this morning. Many, many mad thanks and props to my friend Dejah Leger, who gave me a ride to the hospital, hung out there until I was out of surgery and settled into a room, and then came back to get me this morning. We got in some lovely musicgeeking about various Quebec musicians and hard-to-find albums, too.
Everything went well and Evergreen’s staff took good care of me. I got several nurses making very sympathetic noises indeed as I explained that my wife hadn’t been able to accompany to the hospital due to recovering from her own surgery. And to my surprise I honestly haven’t been in much pain at all following the procedure. My stomach feels weirdly stiff and sore, but to the degree of “I did a whole bunch of situps” rather than being actively painful. I can move around pretty well and I’m pretty coherent. I am on mild painkillers, but so far have needed only a single Percocet and a Tylenol when it’s time for me to have any painkillers at all. We’ll see if that continues once the anesthesia finishes processing out of my system.
I’m instructed to walk as much as I can tolerate, although I am not to do any vigorous exercising, and I’m to do “active” resting as well–things that let me read, or be on the computer, or in general keeping me occupied as long as I’m taking it easy. Which, already planned for. Yay, crappy movie marathon!
It turned out to be a very good idea to cut my hair, since that helped make me more comfortable at the hospital. And I spent most of the evening alternating between looking at Facebook comments, playing Plants Vs. Zombies 2, and reading a Nora Roberts novel on my Nook. Zonked out around 7:40ish and slept off and on through the night, round about to 6ish or so in the morning. This morning, Dr. Isbell showed up to chat with me and clear me to go home, and Dejah showed up at 10 to get me, so great turnaround time there, really.
The type of hysterectomy I had was specifically geared towards minimal recovery time, for which I’m grateful–specifically, laparosopsic hysterectomy. Since I’m still pretty young and healthy they felt this would be a good choice for me. And given that I am in fact in minimal pain at the moment, it certainly seems like it was the correct decision!
Now, they did go ahead and take my ovaries and tubes, too, so this was pretty much a complete uninstall of reproduction.lib, as it were. So any future attempts at reproduction on my part will have to involve cloning, or parthenogenesis, or maybe just splitting in half like an amoeba. Or maybe getting Dara to build me a duplicator, or getting a hold of the copier that can duplicate people in that episode of Gravity Falls.
And okay yeah yeah I could also more figuratively reproduce myself in my work an’ stuff.
So now I’m at home and I get to wear pajama pants and loose shirts, and watch a whole LOT of crappy movies. Dara goes in for her next eye followup tomorrow afternoon, at which point, hopefully, she’ll be cleared to look up again. At that point, the Movie Suckoff will officially begin!
Many thanks, many hugs, and much love to folks on various sites who have been sending kind words, offers of meals, and offers of companionship. Thanks again to Dejah for playing chauffeur, which is totally getting her dinner at a future date of her choosing, and probably a bottle of Sortilege as soon as I can find her some. Thanks to Geri in BC, who’s sending us some help for Dara’s stressed back and neck. And thanks to Kaye, who sent us a big ol’ gift package full of chocolate-covered strawberries and pineapples and general tasty treats!
Yum!
Once Dara’s cleared to look up again and we can return the couch to its usual configuration (right now we’ve got it set up so she can lay on it as comfortably as possible and play with her iPad at the same time), we’ll be visitable. Local folks, if you want to come over, just let us know! Call me if you have my number, or email, or drop me a PM on Facebook, whatevs.
And as a lovely postscript, I’ve also just received word that my other carbon fiber flute purchase, the fife in D, is ready to be shipped up to me! And I just got my “Greetings from Mount AWESOME” t-shirt as well from Teefury. :D
Now comes the recovery agenda for the week, and movies, and more reading. Cherie Priest just dropped her brand new release, Fiddlehead, which I happily slurped down onto the Nook; I’ll be buying the paperback of that ASAP as well. And I got a Kickstarter backer reward for my friend Chrysoula Tzavelas’ new release as well, Infinity Key! And I hope to finally finish up Chapter 14 of the Trilingual Hobbit Reread, too!
Last round of errands and household chores today, before I head in for the surgery tomorrow. And one of the big things I did today was get a haircut–partly because my hair had gotten to that “okay, officially too long now” point that I periodically hit anyway, but mostly because if my hair is short, it’s way lower maintenance. And since I’m about to spend the rest of the month in recovery mode, low maintenance hair is a good thing indeed.
And this is the new haircut. Not bad for a phone selfie, if I do say so myself.
Short Hair Selfie
Meanwhile, I also got my thyroid prescription renewed a week early so I don’t have to worry about that later. I bought a few pairs of sweat pants as well as some pajamas since I was advised to wear loose things, and I did manage to find some pajamas that weren’t too stupid-looking.
AND, most importantly, I have acquired five of the six crappy movies for the forthcoming next round of the Murkworks Movie Suckoff! I had to swap in Alligator and Crocodile for the shark contenders, given that Scarecrow didn’t have Ghost Shark, Snow Shark, or Sand Sharks. And while they did have Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, it’s still a new enough movie that Scarecrow still has it on 2-day rental status, which ain’t gonna work. So we’ll be streaming that one. Still though I did rent five things from Scarecrow and that does my heart good.
Rest of the day will go to laundry and bathroom cleanup and synopsis writing. After midnight I’ll go on “can’t have any food or beverages” status, and Dejah will come get me in the morning so I can report for “be knocked out so they can do uncomfortable things to my innards” duty.
I may or may not be able to post from the hospital; we’ll see how coherent I am after the procedure is done. Evergreen has wifi so in theory once they settle me into a room for the evening I should be able to check in. But if not I’ll check in as soon as I’m able to come home. More bulletins as events warrant, all.
