In Which The Sadim Touch Strikes

14 January 2004

I had one of those days when I can't do anything right, and half of it wasn't even my fault. All the things I could obviously get done were not nearly so obvious in practice. The fun stuff to look forward to -- I had a good lunch with Heathah, but Mark and I missed the beginning of "Totoro" due to driving woes. I decided the Marillier book was not anything I was in the mood to read, and I don't know if it was at fault at all. Work was slow, dinner went wrong, and generally I had the Sadim Touch. And, as I said, half of it wasn't my fault. So on top of doing everything wrongety wrong wrong, I had to deal with consciously not getting all self-flagellating about it. Wheeeeee.

And I can't even say whether I'll be able to do anything right today. It'll be an adventure, I guess.

We got bad news yesterday about one of my grandma's good friends: lung cancer that's already spread into spinal cancer. Prognosis on that: the obvious. This is a woman who's been in my life for awhile, and I'm sad on her account, but mostly on my grandma's. But on the phone, Grandma was talking about how they had just hit it off immediately the first time they met, and I said I knew, Michelle and I had been like that at freshman orientation. And I wish I hadn't said that, because it's true, there are some friends who are just like that. But then Grandma also said that now the only thing she could wish for was that her friend wouldn't suffer too long. And then there it was, and I'd already compared them to Michelle and me, and I couldn't unsay it. I asked Mark, "Is being old going to make sense when we get there?" and he said, "I don't think so, no." I hope he's wrong. But it does look like a hard kind of sense to make, from here. (To be clear, it's not my grandmother I think is being nonsensical here, it's the whole situation that is not real long on the cosmic sense making.)

I'm moving very carefully this morning. After yesterday, I feel like I'm going to break anything I look at sideways. Since I already decapitated a shepherd in my first attempts to start putting Christmas decorations away last weekend, I'm kind of avoiding that section of the chore list entirely right now.

So. Reading F&SF and The Raven Ring, maybe. Maybe working on the book, on some stories, on sending out a story or maybe more if more come back later today. Trying to get past the feeling that everything is going to shatter if I touch it. Trying to get warm.

It'll all come back together again, more or less. I just need to take some deep, quiet breaths and sit with my hands folded and wait. I'm not very good at waiting, but I need to do it for a good minute, minute and a half at least. Just to get past this spooked mood. We'll give that a shot. Next on the list if the waiting doesn't work: running around in circles doing the bibble-bibble thing with my lip.

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