27 October 2003

My body seems to have decided that sleep is overrated and six hours will do. In some ways, I appreciate this -- I have plenty to do with waking hours -- but in others, I could use a bit more of the sleep. Ah well. We'll get by, me and the body.

I still really like Sorcery and Cecelia but didn't have time to finish reading it yesterday. Today, I hope. Something important has just happened to the chocolate pot, and the consequences are not yet clear to me, and I want them to be. And there's a sequel coming eventually, and another Wrede Regency fantasy is sitting on my stack to read, and I'm happy with that idea, too. I'm still pondering whether I should ask Wrede what she thinks is important about herself, since she's local and all. But that might be weird. I'm not sure.

I still love my job. Even when it's plagued with seven kinds of uncertainty or more.

The post office has decided to make it "or more," because it was at some point last week delivering my rejection letters to Hayward. Where I don't live, and where Mark will not be living very soon, either. So I feel the need to go speak firmly with the post office about that, just in case it will do some good. I'm not sure what they can do: I have the confirmation letters saying that people with the last name I write under and the last name with which I sign checks should all have their mail forwarded to this address. They agreed to it themselves. But I have gotten nothing addressed to Marissa Lingen in Hayward here in Eagan. It's perturbing.

And yet, the editor who annoys me is also giving me some baffled kind of hope for the post office. I sent an editor a query about a story, and he said he'd responded to it early the previous week (now two weeks ago) and I should be getting the response in the mail soon. What, now it's a big secret? If he knew he'd read and responded to the story, he couldn't say, "I rejected that last week" or "I accepted that last week" or "I wanted to see some rewrites on that, details in the letter I sent," thank you very much? This was too hard? Or is there something magical about the paper letter? I assume it's a rejection, because I always assume it's a rejection, and because he didn't jump into my virtual arms shouting, "Long lost brilliant author, honor me with more of your pixels!" Not that any of the editors who accept me have done that, either. They all left the "Long lost" part out.

And the reassuring point of all that is that it didn't get delivered to Hayward, so perhaps it's getting rerouted. One can hope.

Also, I have determined that if I don't see the mop or a box of thank-you note-cards right away, I'm going to buy new, and that's final. And the only thing you can say to sway me from this is the location of the past mop and note-cards. If, in fact, there are past note-cards. There are postcards, but they're not particularly spiffy and seem a bit perfunctory for a thank-you; on the other hand, at this point, it's time to write them, and perfunctory is always better than not at all.

Also, I just want it known that the Not The Moose Book is going to be hideous to edit, and I'm going to ask for pity at least once and mercy at least three or four times, and that will be before it leaves this house. The up side is that I once again feel like I will get this book to the editing stage with all its attendant begging.

Do you know how I got through yesterday, and also the day before? By doing what needed to be done that day and not very much else. I'm hoping to get ahead of that curve, so that I have whole days when nothing absolutely needs to be done that day or else, because having things absolutely needing to be done that day or else is dangerous. It's just begging for a morning like Saturday morning to throw a monkey wrench in the whole works. We attempt to armor ourselves against monkey wrenches here. Vicious nasty monkey wrenches. We hatesss them...oh, no, we're not going that way again, not even on six hours of sleep. It was bad enough that the Strib had a headline asking whether Simon and Garfunkel's reunion tour was "all about the Benjamins" and got me imagining their characteristic harmonies built around that particular piece. In fact, that was more than bad enough. Stupid Strib. Even telling me where to take my sick rhinoceros is not adequate penance.

Does that seem particularly dada? Because I'm telling you, they have an article about a rhinoceros vet on the front of the Variety section today. When you think about it, it hardly does get more varied than that. Most of the time Variety sections mean that they have both fashion and entertainment news ("Both kinds, country and western!"). So I suppose I appreciate the Strib in that regard. I'm still hearing Artie in my head on the Benjamins song, though. I think they owe me a great recipe or something this week for that.

But all of this is beside the point; I have stories to ship out and groceries to fetch and articles to poke at, and there's still the matter of the chocolate pot to find out about. Regency fantasies...I never want to write one (yes, go ahead and quote me later), but they're fun, so I'm glad someone else does. Also, they creep into my vocabulary. So far this morning the computer has been "vexing." I'm beginning to sound like...ooh. I know who should get this for Christmas! (And you know who you are, I'll bet, and I know you're reading this, and if there was any way at all I'd do an epistolary Regency fantasy, it would be like this one and a collaboration with you. And all of a sudden I can see the fun of it. But we're both awfully busy, so once again I'm glad someone else has done one instead.)

Right then. Things that need doing today. And the chocolate pot.