The good part is that I’ve lost nearly ten pounds since this hit two weeks ago today.  The bad part?  Well, hell, it’s pretty much all bad.  Can’t write most of the time–the window is vanishingly small when my mind works at all.  I guess the upside is that I’ll be able to write about how the drug addict feels when I need to do so for a character, but my nervousness about getting addicted diminishes what little joy I take in that possibility.

But, it will soon be over.  I will have put my life on hold for three solid weeks by the time this is over.  Were my boss not an understanding soul, I probably wouldn’t have a job to go back to at the end of it.  I think they’re just enjoying the financial break that not paying my salary is giving their bottom line.  And, in the end, it will be good for them to miss me.  I guess.  I’m easy about it either way–I already budgeted our finances for the rest of the year for me not getting a paycheck at all.  That way, if I do get a paycheck, it will be gravy – money to put in savings (ha!) or just play around with…not always a good idea in a town with a casino!

Did send Pig out to an agent over e-mail, which took a lot of nerve, it really did.  Wrote a prologue for it, changed the name to Old Flames Burning.  Haven’t heard a word back from the agent yet.  Need to start lining up other possibilities–just can’t wrap my mind around it while I’m “managing my pain.”  If I sound disgusted with it all, then I’m writing something well enough to be understood anyway.  I’ve got cabin fever.  And a terrorist gall bladder that tries to bend my gut into a pretzel for about twelve hours a day.  Tired of it.

Now that I’ve been hired as the fitness director for the Nautilus Fitness Center in Alton, it’s time to get back to work on the book.  I’ve gotten tacit agreement from the owners of the center to begin a gastric bypass information group at the center in the spring.  The book could be a key piece of that… if I can get moving on it again.  Got the schedule worked out so that I’m off on Tuesday afternoons, so there’s a start.

Reworking my entire life in the last 16 months hasn’t been easy, and it hasn’t been cheap, either financially or emotionally.  But I’m really beginning to like this person I’ve become.  I want to keep the good from the old me and discard what wasn’t working…lots of work yet to be done.

August 25, 2006

The smell of the old paste brings back some unlovely childhood memories.  My father was a painter/paperhanger, and I grew up in construction zones.  I had to call my brother yesterday to ask him how to put texture on a wall, and he took me to task because I should have been listening when we were kids going to work all summer with our dad.  I told him, and meant it, that I had resisted learning anything about the business with my entire heart and soul and will.  Not sure he understood it, since he ended up following in our father’s footsteps, but he gave me the information I needed–in so many words, his answer was “Don’t.”  Evidently texture is one of those things that an amateur can screw up so badly that a professional can’t fix it.

Doing all this work in order to sell the house–got lots more to do.  The aforementioned walls have to be patched, sanded, and painted, along with many other things.  Trying to put together a moving sale at the same time, and get the majority of it done before the house goes on the market.  Not looking forward to leaving this house–we’ve lived here for more than four years, and love so many things about it.  But putting this much money into a mortgage and a monster electric bill for a four-bedroom house when there are only the two of us, and with no one to leave it to, makes no sense.  Time to go back to apartment rental.  We can save anywhere from $600 to $1000 a month, according to where we move.  And, when there’s only one assured income, that sounds pretty good.  It also sounds good that we won’t have to pay taxes or interest, and if something happens to the insufferable water heater, someone else comes to fix the damn thing!

Oh, and writing?  This is the best excuse so far that I’ve found to not write.  However, before I dived into this exercise, I sent Pig off to another agent.  After a turndown from a New York agent, I decided to start it making the rounds of Texas reps, starting with Mike Farris.  I pitched it to him a couple years ago, when the book was still in its nascency, and he said he wanted to see it.  We’ll see what happens from there. 

Today, all the nitnoid momentary dramas that seem to swarm all over my life re-swarmed me.  Had to go to the library to get something signed for the workshop.  To the tire store to get the tires rotated.  To the post office to mail my manuscript out to an agent (finally, SOMEthing involved with writing).  My knee hurts, so I don’t want to exercise.  If I don’t exercise, I don’t deserve to sit down and write.  Or something like that.  I’m exhausting myself with my own excuses, and I find myself whiny, self-destructive, and maddening.  All the stuff that irritates me about other people.

Grrf.

Mixed in with that is boredom.  Sick of myself, sick of cleaning house, sick of being the good little wife… I think I’m making my husband nervous, I’ve been so solicitous lately.  Bringing him dinner, washing AND putting away his clothes.  My usual policy is more like benign neglect, much like the administration under which my houseplants survive or don’t.  It’s worked pretty well for 26 years of marriage, which may be why my occasional bursts of excessive domesticity seem to unnerve him. 

I’ll get there–I know I will.  And then I’ll bemoan the fact that I can’t seem to get my head far enough out of the book to accomplish anything around the house.  Never satisfied… never, never, never.

Haven’t been able to get into a real routine, as our schedule’s been so haywire, but when I was writing “This Little Pig,” I would write ten to fifteen pages in longhand on one day, get up the next morning and process them into the computer, with minor edits along the way, which would get my brains kickstarted for the next longhand session.  Put together 55,000 words in about 30 days that way, so it obviously works for me. 

So, I got a chapter of “Finally the Weight is Over” written, just haven’t processed it yet.  So what am doing on here?  Time to get back to the book!

As I told Bill, I needed to talk to my husband, about our future before I could make a commitment.  So, Rick and I talked for a couple of hours during breaks from the Mav’s playoff game.  I’ve learned, over the years, to work around team and TV timeouts during sporting events… .  So, after much discussion, punctuated by some really depressing play by the Mavericks, the gist from my husband was, “Do what you choose, but I’d love to see you pursue your dream of becoming a published writer.”

Have I said how much I love that man?  While I didn’t need permission, per se, knowing that he’s completely in my corner as I commit to the writing game is incredibly important.  He’s the reason I was able to do more than just go back to school, I was able to graduate in three and a half years, summa cum laude.  His amazing support is the reason I’ve been able to excel at every successful venture I’ve ever undertaken, including my gastric bypass.

The next couple of years are going to be SO much fun… !

Oh, and the itch?  Prickly heat, from having my bathing suit on too long… Been living in the darn thing, with all this 100-degree weather going on.  This too, shall pass in its own time.

I’m in the middle of a non-fiction book proposal for a funny, irreverent look at my gastric bypass surgery.  I don’t think I’m just a one-note wonder, either–there are a lot of other areas I’m interested in, from writing a piece on comparative religions for the vaguely interested to writing a book on dealing with abuse in later life.  From the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

The world is full of possibilities from here–and I’m going to grab every one I can.  Being fired may just be the best thing that ever happened to me, as long as I use it for fuel for my writing fire.  My aim?  I want to be sitting on Oprah’s couch a year from now touting my new book, and saying to my recent ex-boss through the camera, “So, how do you like me now?”

Oh, and I don’t say this often enough–but thank God for my husband, Rick.  If he weren’t here, fully behind every move I make, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

Visuals from the morning walk – I love the nascent oak leaves,  fragile green, so young they seem to shiver on these chilly March mornings.  They are at their most beautiful now, before they darken, all gloss and muscle over the summer months.

Wondered whether squirrels feel the cold the way we do…

I had decided I would get the book making the rounds the minute I got the first fifty pages done, but I realize that I can’t.  What if they got back to me three days later and said “Send the whole thing!”  There I’d be, with a couple hundred pages of revisions to do inside a week.  Bleah. 

Am also working on a short story tentatively titled “Addressing Gods Anonymous.”  I’m really pleased with the concept–a 12-step group for gods who are trying to break the deity habit, but so far, I’m not so pleased with the execution.  Started with one god – Erma – as a talking head, but I think I need more.

Knee’s hurting-can’t sleep-that’s why I’m writing this at 1:30 in the morning.  Think I’ll go try again, though.

That was part of the excuse I’ve been using not to write… “How can you expect to accomplish anything in the midst of all that chaos?”  So, today, I removed the excuse.  My office is now de-messified.  Now I just have to write, right? Right!

With Rick still out from the anesthetic, the gastroenterologist came and told me the results.  He said “Every inch of his stomach lining looks like raw hamburger meat. He has hemorrhagic gastritis.”  So how does one of the most phlegmatic men I’ve ever known end up with a full-stomach ulcer?  Aspirin. 

Rick had a heart attack at 47, and has been faithful about taking what the cardiologist tells him to take, when he tells him take it.  The heart attack was almost purely genetic–he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke.  So I’m sitting here railing against fate.  The medicine that’s keeping him healthy heart-wise will kill him if he doesn’t stop taking it. 

Today sucked.