22 February 2002

You know what's making this week sort of okay, as we wait? The fact that Great Grandma has lived a long life already, for one thing, but more importantly, the fact that she made it clear what she wanted for her last days of life, and now she's getting what she wanted. I don't think you can do much better than that when someone you love is dying. So it sounds kind of macabre, but please, talk to your loved ones. Accidents happen. Mark and I talked about it last night, about what he would want under which conditions. It was hard. Definitely worth it, though.

I just want to be done with all of this. It's around, in the background of my mind, all the time.

We watched figure skating last night, and I was amazed: the woman we thought should win the gold won the gold, and the silver and bronze were also awarded appropriately. Astonishing. I was also pretty glad to see Canada beat the U.S. in women's hockey (no, don't kill me, Grandma!), because it looked to me like the calls were pretty biased against Canada, and if they'd lost because of bad ref'ing, that would just be unacceptable. (I think the Russians' little snit fit is also unacceptable -- if their athletes are doping, they deserve to get caught, and if they're feeling picked on, they shouldn't let 'em do that.)

I'm quite annoyed by the Visa commercial with women's bobsled and the bunny, though. "Look! We're sweet and girly and stop for bunnies! But we're still real bunny-crushing competitors on race day!" Fabulous. This is what we call progress.

David has pointed out to me that my attempts at using a trademark sort of TM symbol have backfired, since it shows up as an umlauted a. Drat. I'm also frustrated by the lack of the "cents" sign on the keyboard, but that's an ongoing thing. I don't actually need to say anything about cents today.

I commend unto you the Scifiction story by James Blaylock for this week and The Onion's article about a trip to Canada, for utterly different reasons.

You know who I'm actually happy with? 'N Sync. No, really. I mean it. I hate their music and would rather listen to the hideous jazzed-up Carmen from last night's figure skating, on a repeating eight-track even. But they're using their positions as teeny-bopper superstars to do cool stuff -- be in the next Star Wars movie, go into space. Whatever. And that's really cool. I mean, what's the point in being famous? The point is being able to do things that would otherwise be out of your reach. Otherwise it's just a bunch of people staring at your every move, and that's no fun. But if I was really famous, I'd want to go up into space, too. So for the first time, I actually respect somebody in 'N Sync. Go figure.

Of yesterday's agenda, I managed most of it. I didn't finish "Small Talk" yet, but I did unexpected work on "Letters to the Ancient Living," so it balances out a bit. I'm hoping to work on both today, and to go to the bank and run a few other errands, and to work on the Not The Moose Book and probably finish Ingenious Pursuits. Yesterday I took a break from it to reread Greenwitch, which was good, but it reminded me that I can ease off a bit on the plot when I'm writing children's books. (No, I'm not writing a children's book yet. I have some work on YAs, but mostly I'm doing adult stuff. But I do plan to do a children's book -- it's on The List.) The plot can be a lot simpler, and it's all right. Good, even.

My other goal for the day is to refrain from obsessing. I think I have a good channel into which to pour recent troubles, in the form of "Letters." I hope so. I have a tendency to clean when something is bothering me, or otherwise to focus a bit obsessively, and cleaning obsessively on Friday and then again on Tuesday or Wednesday seems like a bad idea. So. Work it is, I hope. I've got a song from "Maroon" in my head (good Christmas present!), "Helicopters": "I'm haunted by a story and I do my best to tell it. Can't even give this stuff away, why would I sell it?" And the rest of it. In case it wasn't clear: I love me some Barenaked Ladies. It's very definitely a BNL day. Sometimes that kind of upbeat darkness is really the only thing I can do. It's nice to have a soundtrack for it.