19 June 2001

Okay, I'm a dirty rotten liar. In so many ways. First of all, despite what I said yesterday, I am sick. Sick sick sick. I feel miserable. Awful. Like, as my mom says, the wreck of the Hesperus. But the good news is (?), I feel differently miserable than I did yesterday. That's got to be good, right?

Mary Anne, being her sweet Mary Annish self, offered to bring me chicken curry. It was a very nice offer. But here's a list of the things I've been able to swallow in the last day and a half: Fruit juice bars. Tomato soup (that is, no chunks). Melted cheese. Juice. Tea. Water. Milk. More tea. Ice cream with chocolate syrup, made into ice cream soup. More tea. (Note: this is not so good when you're hypoglycemic.) I'm planning to try some yogurt later, and maybe some oatmeal, if I feel daring. I appreciate the offer, but I really, really hope that Mary Anne's chicken curry is not slurpy enough for me to eat it right now.

(Slurpy is, too, a word, stupid spellchecker!)

I hate being sick. I'm really no good at it. I keep trying to behave as though I'm well. Except, clearly, I'm not. (The dizziness is the first tip-off.) Tim has talked in his journal about how his brain shuts down when he's sick. Mine goes on hyperdrive. Only yesterday and this morning, it's been on a weird sort of hyperdrive. Usually when I get sick, it goes on a wittiness hyperdrive. I come up with more clever things the more I'm unable to express them. (And when I write them down and look at them later, they remain clever, unlike the witty things I come up with when I'm tired.) This time, though, I'm on an image hyperdrive. Not that I'm working on my image. That images keep popping up for use in the Not The Moose Book, with an occasional image for The Tides Between the Worlds (the second sequel to Fortress, in case you don't keep up on the books I haven't written yet). Not scenes, really. Not context. Just images. Hurricane lamps. Apples. Picking over rocks in the darkness. Secret entrances. So, dutifully, I write them down in my paper journal: "Avery with apple later than Karl," stuff like that, that will make more sense to me when I'm actually writing the books in question. I hope. It's worked that way before, anyway.

So yesterday I did not get Fortress sent out. Another way in which I'm a dirty rotten liar. I tried. It's just that we ran out of printer paper, and I'm too sick to drive. (Hoo boy, am I too sick to drive. I felt better than this when I woke up three hours ago. I hate when this happens.) And I had already sent Mark for fruit juice bars, and Timprov was asleep. So. I only printed out about seventy pages of it. We desperately need printer paper, though, because yesterday was a double-rejection day, and I have to print out the rest of Fortress plus the two stories that got rejected. (My rejectomancy is working overtime on one of the rejections, but we'll save that bit of neurosis for another day.) I also worked on Reprogramming a good bit and finished Sabriel (thanks, Heather!) and read Lirael. I don't know what's on the agenda for today. Being sick was not on the schedule at all, so I'm not sure I have that many Sick Activities. I mean, I'm sure I'll figure out useful stuff to do. I always do. But some of it will be things like "edit that stupid story!" and some will be things like "fix the picture frame" and some of it will be things like "lie on the couch reading incomprehensible Finnish literature."

WHINE WHINE WHINE! Sorry I'm such a whiner. It's just that I had plans for today that did not involve being miserable. Every day is like that, actually, but today in particular. Ah well. I'll get over this, soon, or Michelle will descend upon me and scowl disapprovingly. She does that. She did it over e-mail yesterday. She sent me an e-mail that said, "You're sick again. (accusatory tone)" She finally told me why she does this. She's attempting to intimidate illness out of me.

Now all those of you who know Michelle, laugh hysterically at her intimidating 4'10" self. Is she big enough to menace a virus? Well, all I know is, it hasn't worked yet....

Hey, go read Tim's poem at Strange Horizons. Now don't go read Lisa Goldstein's A Mask for the General, because he did a better job with stuff similar to what she was trying to do. I like Goldstein well enough, but I like Tim better. And his poem.