Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 - Moving slowly I'm not even going to apologize. If you think I should, then it's high time you moved and remembered the hell that it is. Seriously, even though I was getting to the point where I wanted to bitch-slap the next person who said to me, "Oh, yeah, moving is hard." (unless they were actually helping, in which case I was too grateful, pathetically grateful, to say anything), I have to say it again. Moving? It's hell. I lived in that house for 5.25 years. I am also a packrat. I cried more than usual in the month of July, and I normally cry pretty often, just to relieve the pressure. Or maybe I didn't so much. I mean, it was so bad that I felt eerily calm towards the end there. Like if anything else bad happened, it would just slide off me. Bad shit went down at work, and I think I really confused the people trying to reprimand me (completely unjustified, but I can't go into it here of course) because I sort of shrugged at them instead of getting upset. They were determined to make my life harder, but my life was already so hard that it just didn't make that much of an impact. And I already knew they didn't really value me as an employee, so it wasn't even that novel a bad thing. Anyway. Yeah. Sucked. Many papers, and towards the end they didn't get sorted, just shoved in a box and moved. Great. Our new place is practically a maze of boxes. It's an archealogical dig around here, and it might be years before I find a vase (this is pressing only because I stopped to say goodbye to my favorite flower guy from the old neighborhood, Yaz, and have a beautiful bouquet leaning precariously out of an old plastic fish bowl on top of a bookcase so the cats don't knock it over). Ok, so the new place rocks. I am slowly learning not to hate the new kitchen (Tim goes ballistic when he hears me complain about the kitchen, which I guess I did a lot while we were moving). It's the smallest kitchen outside of Manhattan, and if one of us wants past, the other one has to scootch down into the office nee dining area to let the other one by. Luckily we really don't do that much cooking, and if it's just one of you in there, well, everything is very nearby and convienent. How's that for looking at the bright side? I have a hammock! I spent hours and hours in the hammock during our first weekend of not-moving last Sunday. It was lovely. In fact, it was while lying in the hammock and feeling too tired to hold the book up to read that I realized that I might actually be sick, not just exhausted. I'd been sleeping lots and having pains all last week, but I ignored them because we were in the home stretch and needed to get all that shit out of the old place by Thursday night. This Monday, at Kaiser, I found out I had not one but TWO infections, and they insisted I take two days off of work and take a scary drug (antibiotic? Actually, I think it's something other than an antibiotic, but I'm not sure) that some people have severe allergic reactions to and which requires I stay out of the sun (Tim says I'll explode, which is funny but makes me very nervous). I was all, "Whoo, two days off of work" but you know what I did most of those two days? Slept. Writhed in pain a bit. Watched a lot of bad TV. Checking email was taxing. I felt narcoleptic, I was so sleepy. It sucked, mightily. Anyway, so I'm feeling marginally better and I'm going to work tomorrow, so I thought I'd update. I can't believe that I'm winding this entry up without going on about my kittens! But it seems to be the case. Oh well, you'll hear more about them than you'll want to in the future, and I think Tim's posting new pics tonight at his journal so you can look there for more on them. Am tired (surprise!) and must go to bed. G'night! UPDATE: Oh! I can't believe I forgot to mention this (see how tired I am?)! I found out today that "Wetting the Bed" the short story in the "Floodwater" chapbook received an honorable mention in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (vol. 16) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Me! Mentioned BY NAME in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror! Holy cow, that's exciting! Yay! Ok, I got out of bed to put that in this journal entry. If I remember any other good news, it'll just have to wait :-) The sun! It burns me!

Exercise Log: Moving is great exercise. I've lost 7 pounds. Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater Currently Reading: Read recently: Low Red Moon by Caitlin R. Kiernan Donate money to my teeth, our moving fund, our wedding fund, or our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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