The Raven's Roost

We're keeping an eye on this tropical system down in the Caribbean right now. Last night it was expected to develop into a category three storm within two days which is terrifyingly fast. It should be making landfall Thursday around the Big Bend area, but obviously the track can and will change. We're making some preliminary preparations right now and by tomorrow morning I'll know if I need to go fight crowds in town for a more extensive supply run. As it is, we may simply have a long power outage. And Waffle House is still open, LOL.

I'm trying to remember now - why did I want my stories to be in the form of comics? Probably because I like comics and I like to draw, but writing was always my strongest point. I'm a slow, meticulous artist, which doesn't allow me knock out pages of comics easily and has me agonizing over poses all day. The thing I'm working on right now, Lora, for example, has something like another thirty pages to go? I forget how many rough pages I laid out. And I cut a bunch of stuff from the story to make the comic something I might be able to finish before I die.

So, why don't I just write? If it needs a picture, I can do some illustrations or short comics. Actually I like doing short comics - around five to ten pages.

Why not write? I'm an English major who focused on literary criticism. I know how a story goes together. I know how world building works. I know where my towel is. People have said they like my art, yes, but I've had people put down a piece of writing I did and say, "Wow, that's really great." So ... why am I not writing?

I don't have a good answer for that aside from the fact that I kind of always wanted to be a cartoonist, but I'm now having to admit that my style of art is just not well suited to it. Of course that doesn't solve the problem of Lora being unfinished, but it makes future projects feel SO much less daunting.

I started re-reading some Gene Wolfe novels, and I suppose that helped nudge me. Every writer has that one author who makes you strive to be a better writer yourself, whether that's Gene Wolfe, Patrick O'Brien, or Ursula LeGuin. I just haven't been reading as much lately. My brain sometimes feels too wrapped in fog to do much of anything intellectual. Hopefully the changing weather will help - summer is just something to be endured, white-knuckling your way through the heat until one morning, the thermometer says 66, and you go outside and you can breathe. Or perhaps that's just me, a person who takes the Florida license plates that say "Endless Summer" as some sort of threat. Always summer! Always summer and never Halloween.

Registration for the Boston Half Marathon isn't open yet, but they've posted the dates. You'll need to run your virtual race September 17 - 19. Coupled with Fox's hope to do another Disney trip in September, which would be a late birthday trip for me, since going in August isn't fun, I may put aside the Tour De Pain until 2022, as it falls on August 13 - 14. That opens up space, saves me some registration money, and allows me to focus on just half marathon training. Then, if all goes right with the world (and I have no reason to assume it will) we'll have Wine & Dine in October/November and Marathon Weekend in January. So I don't want to overbook myself.

I'm dealing with stupidity between my doctor's office and the insurance, they say the doc denied a refill, so I left a message. Honestly, isn't there some way to cure anxiety disorders? It seems like it would be easier than dealing with this bullshit, and not needing RX refills means I could avoid the doctor more. There's got to be some way to do that.

I have no idea of the interest levels, but I'm considering either taking video or live streaming an attempt to get the "Bronze Medal" achievement in Blasphemous. It requires you to get through the bronze doors of the church within three hours, so I'd need to get through the first four boss battles, while skipping all the side quests. I'd also be doing it with a "penance" in place. Straight up video capture would be less interesting, since it would only be the game's audio files, but a live stream would probably be rated R for strong adult language.

I got to touch a mole the other day. The terra cotta dish I put corn in for the squirrels and rabbits (keeps the squirrels out of the bird feeders) holds water when it rains, so I went outside near nightfall to tip the water out. In doing so, I uncovered a mole who'd burrowed underneath the dish and when it didn't move, I tried stroking its back. I was surprised at how soft and velvety its fur was. When it didn't make any attempt to leave, I picked it up and it let me hold it for a little while before pooping on me, then trying to dig its way out of my hands, which felt really strange. I finally put it back in the hole it had dug under the corn dish, and it dug its way out of sight. I think it's still out there, because there are more mole hills around that dish this morning.

I gotta go back out later this afternoon for a doctor appointment. I don't want to, it's rainy and hot and gross outside and I'm getting anxious.
( Just medical banality. )
I need to take some updated photos of my pumpkin vines. I was worried they wouldn't thrive out here. Now every time I go check on the garden I realize they've grown noticeably. As in, I might need Fox in the pic for scale. Last time I was able to say, "the garden beds are eight feet long, so that should tell you what size they are." Now it's like ... what garden bed. IT'S HUGE. And according to UF's ag extension site, they should start producing pumpkins next month. So we'll be awash in pie pumpkins. Which is not the worst problem ever. I can always can or freeze whatever we want for personal consumption and if there are too many I might talk to the guy up on the blacktop about him selling them for me. Or I'll just start randomly leaving heaps of pumpkins on people's porches. "Here, take a pumpkin!"
"Oh no, I couldn't just take your pumpkins you worked so hard ..."
"It wasn't a request. Take. The. Pumpkins."

So I might even get a head start on fall baking and make a bunch of pumpkin bread to stick in the freezer. Then I can just gift it to people. Here, have some pumpkin bread. I made muffins, too. How about some pumpkin scones?

- The Library Book - I finished up this volume by Susan Orlean recently. I enjoyed it, but I realize it's not the kind of writing everyone is going to like. Orlean begins with the Los Angeles Central Library fire that destroyed much of the collection and part of the building in April 1986. The fire occurred the same day that news was beginning to trickle out of the Soviet Union and neighboring countries about a nuclear incident at Chernobyl, and that story almost entirely eclipsed the library fire outside of L.A.
The book swings back and forth between the fire and its aftermath, the history of the Los Angeles Library, about libraries in general, biography, and some autobiography. I felt that using the fire as a cord to hang all the other stories from worked quite well. But some readers might find it disjointed, or that Orlean puts herself too much in the story. I gave it five stars on Goodreads, and it's a good semi-light read. It was hard, as an avid reader, book lover, and former library worker, to read about the fire and destruction and all the materials that were lost. But the tone of the book overall was a positive, hopeful one. And without going too much into current politics, it reminds you that despite having Google, we need libraries now more than ever.

- I filled up another journal and started a fresh one. When I went to shelve the finished one I realized I've filled six journals so far.


I've managed to pick up a lot of beneficial habits over the past few years and keeping a written, private journal is definitely one of the better ones. I think I might have talked about it before, but my journals are more like commonplace books in that they aren't strictly about my day and my personal thoughts, but have quotes, passages from books I'm reading, occasionally pictures or maps, and some of my fictional work.

So actually, even though I'll keep writing it out longhand, I'm considering starting a "world building" tag here. I'm not going to make it a friend-restricted thing or make people do anything extra if they want to see it, but I'll have the entries tagged so you can search for/skip them depending on interest levels.

- In my Anxiety Closet this month, doctor visits! I made a checkup appointment for next week and I'm waffling about asking to get my bloodwork done early so the doctor can discuss it with me at the appointment. My liver enzyme levels have been high the last couple of years, but each year is lower than the previous one, but he still keeps bugging me for a liver ultrasound, which I obviously have not done. I'm also anxious about my blood glucose and A1C because ... because me.
See, last year Fox had the idea that if we did blood sugar testing it might help with eating and fueling for long runs. I thought that was an excellent idea. Until I started testing my sugars and routinely getting high readings, no matter when, no matter what, all the time. Like 120s and 130s when I get up in the morning.
Fox says that my response to food isn't remotely like an actual diabetic's in that I don't experience the spikes and crashes, I can eat high-sugar foods without feeling exceptionally good or bad, and I don't have the awful dietary habits that most prediabetics or type-2 diabetics have. That doesn't stop me from worrying about it though. I mean, it's entirely possible the meter is calibrated wrong but the sheer amount of constant, high-level anxiety it was provoking made me stop doing the readings. I'd cut out all the carbs and sugars I could and still get stupid-high readings, so I was convinced I was going to die at any moment. So that anxiety is back now, whee fun.

Because, anxiety.

- I hope this embeds properly.