Week Ending 9/24

Well, what to say about this week. It's been kind of up and down. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped while at the same time getting more done that I expected.

The best part... the absolute best part... was that in one day I managed to get a shower, make myself lunch (soup and a tuna fish sandwich) and paint minis. All in the same day! I know, for most people that doesn't sound like much but for me that is Awesome! I didn't even crash hard the next day... though the headache I had by the end of it was pretty impressive. 

One more fun story from this week... 

Usually, my wife takes our cat - Hippy - outside for a half hour or so after dinner. Hippy is pretty mellow and her idea of being outside is mostly to lay in the grass a little ways down the hill and watch the birds. She knows that if she goes too far away or out of sight, she gets brought back in and she obeys those restrictions. 

One even this week, my wife was tired and I decided I'd take Hippy out. I gave her a stern look and said "You know, I can't chase you. So, no wandering off. You break the rules, I'm not doing this again."

So, out we went. I sat on a camp chair and read my book while Hippy lay in the grass. At one point, I looked up and she'd wandered down the hill and was making her way onto the neighbor's driveway... much too far away. I stood up, glared at her and pointed firmly at the ground by my feet. Hippy looked at me and, without hesitation, dashed back up the hill to sit beside me. 

In the end, when I was ready to go in, she just pleasantly trotted over and waited by the door to be let in. 

She's a good cat.

Well, that's my week. 

Onward

Week Ending 9/17

 I think I've caught another cold. 

One could be forgiven for thinking it might be the same one but I really do think it's a new one. I think this mostly because I was feeling OK most of last week and then yesterday I got slammed with a headache, congestion and coughing. Rested yesterday, felt a bit better today but still taking it easy.

The only other thing of note from this past week is the day I woke up sometime around 4:30... or maybe 4:00... certainly well before 5:00. I got up, puttered on the computer and crashed around 7:30, which is an average day for me the past couple of weeks. Doesn't really matter that it was from before dawn until about the time Juno feeds the cats in the morning... it was three good hours and I enjoyed them. It can be nice to not be tied to someone else's schedule sometimes. 

All in all, I'm feeling pretty positive about things. Sick, sure... but positive.

Onward 

Elemental (Pixar, 2023)

I'm going to start by say that I really liked this movie and it surprised me.

I don't know what I really expected from this movie. I guess a quirky love story between a fire elemental and a water elemental... and I got that. I also got some serious and meaningful commentary on immigration, inequality and racism - especially institutional racism (a world "not built for Fire People" ... where the basic infrastructure is water-based and thus dangerous to them). Add in a quirky interracial romance and the struggle of a child to assert their own identity in the face of well-meaning parental influences. 

Mild Spoiler

.

.

.

.

.

It's worth noting, many of the deeper problems of racism and inequality in the movie aren't solved or even directly challenged. They simply exist. The world doesn't get changed in the end. Individuals get changed but the world remains. 

In the end, for its fantastical world, Elemental is a surprisingly grounded story... one of love, growing up and being who you are in a world that is both subtly and overtly hostile. The fantastical exists to allow us (by us, I mean middle-class, white Americans) to share in parts of the real world that we don't experience.

I highly recommend it. 

Week Ending 9/10

 Still working my way out from under this cold. 

The "cold" part is pretty much dealt with, but I'm still really tired. I was talking to my mom, who also has chronic illnesses, and we both agreed that there is a real difference between the "I'm tired all the time" tired and the "I'm sick" tired. It's hard to put into words, but I really can tell the difference. 

So, still resting. Struggling a little with having several things I want to do now that I'm a little better than last week... but I'm trying not to stress about it. Managing my own expectations of myself and saying - OK, we'll work on this project a bit today. 

Onward

Week Ending 9/3

OK, so I caught a cold.

On the one hand, this pretty much means I spent most of last week in bed. A couple interesting things come out of this... 

The first is the reminder that, while I've been chronically ill for a couple of years now, I really haven't been sick - as in caught a cold or whatever - very often during that span. Certainly less often than I would be sick while I was healthy. Points for resting and taking care of myself, I guess.

The second is that I actually felt more relaxed, at ease and generally better about life last week, while I was sick, than I have for the past several weeks. That's interesting, isn't it. I think, in part, it was due to the fact that I stopped putting expectations on myself and just let myself feel what I felt. Hopefully, I'll take that lesson. :)

In other news, I got a couple of chapters of Wyrd Tales - Bad Moon Rising posted and came up with a new ambition for that. I'm going to aim at posting one chapter a week, on Wednesdays... with the option of posting a bonus chapter on Fridays if I end up with too big a backlog or am just too eager to post. I hope, by giving myself this ambition, I'll be encouraged to write (which is good exercise for the little grey cells) but I won't feel pressured to churn out multiple chapters a week. Also, I should be able to build up a backlog of drafts so that I can have something to post on weeks when I'm not feeling well.

Still feeling a little under the weather, so... resting.

Onward