Archives for December 2008

Look at that! It's the end of another year. Let's quickly go over what this very strange year has held, shall we?

January:

Diagnosed as allergic to soy lecithin. OMG, I've been allergic to 99.99% of all chocolate goodness for that long? That's crazy. I'm doing okay with it, though.

It was nice this week, though, to remember that although I've been avoiding sugar, I'm not actually allergic to it. Therefore, when I had that lebkuchen and stollen that my sisters made, my face/eyes/tongue weren't going to blow up. Boy, did I get a sugar rush. But fun!

Harriet got older. But she also got wiser, and dare I say it? Cuter, too.

February:

Boy, I didn't do much. I wrote. I knitted. I went to Stitches. I completed Jeanie, which is one of my favorite things I've ever made.

March:

Bought my Roomba-boyfriend! I still heart my Roomba. Nine am, rain or shine, home or not, I am vacumming. If you have three dogs and four cats, you should totally have one. Of course, it breaks a lot, but Costco just refunds my money and I go down to aisle 19 and grab another one. I'm just about due for a new one — the spinning arms fell off and the screw is stripped. Still working, though. The one I have now is the hardiest so far — I will be sorry to see this one go.

Lala found Bart (who has been adopted by a man in Danville, so that means Bart is now RICH and spoiled and probably only eating caviar and prime rib. Do NOT tell Clara.)

I finished the first edit of Love Spun. Whoohoo!

April:

We went to Hearst Castle for our 2nd anniversary. Yay! I had a really, really bad flu. Boo. I wrote most of a script. I sent out my first, trembling query letters to agents. I went to visit the little mama, who wasn't feeling well. It wasn't the best month for anyone we knew, actually.

May:

Lala was deep in training for the AIDS ride, so I was a bike-widow for a month. Mom went into the hospital with lots of symptoms that eventually were diagnosed as multiple myeloma. I finished the Mom sweater at her bedside:

June:

Lala rode the AIDS Lifecycle, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I was SOOOO proud of her.

Mom died. My heart broke in a way that will never be healed, nor should it be.

I re-learned that I have a kick-ass family.

We had a music party for Mom, which she would have liked very much.

Sister Christy had her appendix out in emergency surgery only a few hours after the above picture was taken. Of all of us, she really had the crappiest couple of weeks. Dude. That just ain't right.

July:

I went up and worked for a couple of weeks at an expanded dispatch center for the big fires we had in California. It was good to get out. But I did work twenty-three days in a row (hello, overtime!), so I was good and tired by the end of it all. But that money paid for a new tattoo:

August:

I attended the Romance Writers of America National Convention, which blew my mind. So many incredible, talented, smart, motivated writers, all in one spot. That was awesome.

And way more awesome, I got myself an agent! Susanna Einstein, best agent in the world.

Merlin Mann wrote a twitter that honestly changed the way I look at my writing:

Yep. I've done that ever since. I've missed a few days since August, but only when I was either sick or travelling, and that's allowable in my personal rules. Otherwise, I've written every single day, and it's made all the difference. I'm convinced of this.

I got a Kindle! I love my Kindle!

My friends bought me a desk! I love my desk! (It was to celebrate my getting an agent — a token of their belief in me. I love them for it.)

September:

Went to Strawberry Music Festival and missed Mom (but had fun with Dad and the Whoreshoes).

Got married. Again. I know. Third time's the charm.

October:

I edited my little hands off, in preparation for Susanna sending out the book.

Said goodbye to sugar. (I'm still off the sugar and 14 pounds lighter for it. I don't miss
it — I'm so used to being allergic to things that it doesn't feel like
deprivation, does that make sense?)

I ran the Nike half-marathon! Woot!

November:

OBAMA! 'Nuff said.

I gave my first reading.

I GOT THE CALL! (Three book deal, HarperCollins (Avon), the first due out in a year.) AKA – the dream come true.

I received my Love Blanket from people like you:

I won Nanowrimo! (Third year in a row, yay!)

Chickens were wanted, and are still being planned for.

December:

New York! (Dude, wasn't I just there? Almost a whole month has gone by? That's bizarre.) I met my agent! I met my editor (May Chen)! It was so great! (Lots of exclamation marks!)

I accepted an offer in Germany for my book. (Thanks, little mama.)

I signed The Contract.

I went to Dad's house for Boxing Day, where we all played Apples to Apples (best family game EVER). I swear I could feel Mom in the kitchen while we laughed in the living room. It was very hard, for all of us. But we made it through. I can only imagine the holidays get easier as time goes on. I hope so, anyway.

All in all, a very, very bad / very, very good year.

And you've been here for all of it, and I thank you. I adore you. I send kisses. Let's move on into 2009, shall we? I'm ready.

Merry Christmas (I always type Merry Christy, since I'm more used to typing my sister's name than the holiday) to you, if you celebrate it. If you don't, then enjoy the non-hoopla!

Actually, this year I am seriously non-hoopla Christmassing it. I'm working today, which is fine. A coworker and friend just lost her father, and went home to Albuquerque, and I'm working for her. Way too many people around me have lost loved ones, just in the last few weeks. It is teh suck.

Tonight, though, I will go home. Lala will be there. Her brother will be there. They will be playing Rock Band, I can almost guarantee it. (Or beta-testing City of Heroes for Mac – they are excited about that.) There will probably be something to eat, and most certainly something to drink, and we will open presents. That should be good.

Tomorrow I drive to Dad's house. The sisters are already there. We will be sufficiently Christmassy and we will get clam chowder. Then I will drive back and finish working on a January 2nd book deadline (yay!). Then this whole holiday crap will be over and we can go back to normal.

I like this photo from 2003. Mom with her new Xmas accordian:

Yep. That's all. More fudge, please.

I went to the optometrist the other day. Lala worries about my not being able to read things on the freeway as well as she can. I know I can see just fine. But to prove her wrong, I went in, and the doc told me I have great vision (apart from my lazy eye, which isn't all THAT lazy). But I do have astigmatism (or as I always hear it, a stigmatism), and I should wear glasses while working so that my eyes are more relaxed while driving.

So I have the best of all worlds: I get to pick cute glasses and wear them when I feel like it. Yay!

But I have earned it: I started wearing glasses when I was six — thick, coke-bottled glasses. Seriously farsighted, I even had to wear bifocals. It sucked. I wore them until I was about fifteen, when my eyes suddenly got better, and I've been good ever since.

Last night, Lala and I got into a competition.

She said, "That's so cool that you get glasses. You'll look hot."

"Hey, I've done glasses. I deserve this. I had the worst glasses when I was a kid."

"No, I had the worst glasses," she said. 

I said, "You don't even understand what I'm saying. Let me tell you about bad glasses. I had the WORST glasses. They were huge, tall ovals with the flat bottoms. Tortoise-shell. With the stems that attached at the bottom of the lenses, and then went UP and over the ear. Polarized. AND THEY WERE BIFOCALS."

Lala just looked at me. She took her time.

"Battlestar Galactica."

If you leave an anonymous comment that's snarky, I'll delete it (especially if it's spelled poorly — then I'll giggle a little while hitting delete). (Also, it's not really anonymous. There's no way you can stop Typepad from capturing your IP address. Then I find out who you are. Silly you.)

Seriously, why do people read the blogs of people they don't like? There are only two people (maybe three) that I don't like in all of blog-land, and I would never visit their sites. I wouldn't ever even give them a drive-by click — they don't deserve that hit. Not that any of us check our stats anymore – I haven't checked mine in years (maybe I should start? But I get more than a million hits a year. Don't really have the time, which is a good problem to have — I ain't complainin'). But if they DID check their stats, I wouldn't want them seeing that I had visited their site. A visit to a site is like a vote. The more the better, no matter why they're coming. I don't spend my clicks like that, you know?

But I can't figure out why people who don't like me would read my site…. Who has the TIME? Who is that bored with her life? Who wants to be upset like that? Am I really that fascinating? Is it the cute animal pictures? Do they have a major crush on Lala and they're jealous of me? Seriously. Must be that last one. Oh, yay, I've figured it out! (And yes, she's crush-worthy, isn't she?)

Now back to the really serious stuff in life — what to wear out to the City tonight. I'm thinking my new fascinator-hat, mmmm?