Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Wish to drink something soothing and alcoholic: Middling.

As it turns out, my contract job has some work for me and I need to go see the client tomorrow and get an idea of what they want me to do for them. Since I haven’t been in an office situation since May 2011, I am perhaps a bit nervous about this. I mean, I can do the work, no problem. But there are certain social cues you need to observe when in an office environment, and I’m gonna have to dredge those up and dust them off. Firm handshake, look the person in the eye, answer questions with the right amount of detail, give the impression that you are the answer to their prayers and can do anything they need, that sort of thing.

I suspect it’s going to be a dodgy night of sleep due to nerves and the fact that I seem to have pulled something in my foot which is making walking difficult. I got my thirty minutes in with Chuck tonight, but if I’m not feeling better tomorrow I may cut down my time or skip altogether.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Urge to get back in the garage and burn metal: Increasing hourly.

Unfortunately, what with it being in the triple digits until Wednesday at the earliest and my garage being un-air-conditioned, it’s best for me to stay inside until it drops down to temperatures where I don’t have to worry about heat stroke. In the meantime I’ve been doing a buttload of Viking knit (which I still have to photograph, but wait until you guys get a load of the gold bracelet with pewter end caps — it’s GORGEOUS) and holiday earrings (Jo-Ann had a sale on their Darice beads so I stocked up on peppermint swirl glass beads and these cool resin Jack-o-lanterns) I have ready for sale.

I’ve also been having something of an Amy Adams film fest today, starting with Sunshine Cleaning and proceeding through Julie and Julia to Arrival (which I particularly love because of my linguistics background). Some days you just need to see a big-eyed redhead act her ass off, I guess.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Sense of Relief: Surprisingly high.

I genuinely don’t remember much of today. The bulk of it was spent making jewelry to fulfill Etsy orders (remember, I have an Etsy store with all kinds of pretty stuff), running said orders to the PO, promoting jewelry and books online, sitting in on the lovely and talented Siobhan Muir‘s Saturday Soliloquy because she was kind enough to promote my stuff, making a buttload of Halloween and Christmas earrings, and carefully running the math to discover that if I add all the incoming funds from various sales and projects, I’ve successfully covered a major bill for the month and I have a skosh left over for next month’s, which is good.

Living paycheck to paycheck sucks, and having that paycheck disappear sucks even more. But hopefully we can get past that soon and get on a more reliable financial grounding. In the meantime, I work my side hustles as best I can, and feed Ramón gyro meatballs because he loves them and they make him happy.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Weariness: Nigh infinite

Stress sucks, pure and simple. Not only does it make it hard to sleep, rob you of your creative drive, and turn you into a ball of anxiety, it can also have long-term physical effects on you.

Which is why I’m doing my best today not to stress. I am taking deep breaths (well, as deep as I can seeing that it’s triple digits down here in the clavicle of Texas and the air is full of plant detritus), thinking good thoughts, reminding myself that other people have it FAR worse than I do, and that the situation at the moment is temporary. It too shall pass, much like a kidney stone, with blood and screaming. But it shall pass.

And no, I’m not talking about any of the WIPs. Those are actually doing fairly well, surprisingly. Anyway, I shall get over this current hump one way or the other. In the meantime, one of my last fertile cycles is upon me and I’m retaining about two pounds of water, which probably isn’t helping with my mood. But God, two pounds is a huge improvement over five to seven pounds.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Readiness for bedtime: Give my my hot cocoa and flannel nightie now, please.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed something disturbing. I’ve been having more and more of a hard time gripping things with my left hand. I would try to pick things up or hold them, and time and time again I’d drop the damned thing. As I am a woman of a certain age, the first thing that came to mind was, “mini-stroke”, followed by a raft of other medical maladies that are not pleasant to contemplate when you know your medical insurance goes bye-bye at the end of the month.

And then today, while I was cursing at a wrapped coil of wire I was trying to saw into jump rings without sawing into my own finger, I noticed that gee, the skin on my left finger and thumb tip is really coarse, almost as if–

As if you’d been making jewelry nonstop for the past six weeks and have been holding small, hot items pinched firmly between your left index finger and thumb while you sawed/filed/sanded them? my subconscious piped up.

Um. Yeah, that.

And in doing so, you’ve built up an extremely thick callus on those extremities, making it difficult to tell when you’re touching things and thus rendering you unable to grip them accurately?

Um…

You’re an idiot.

Yes, I know. But at least now I’m not worrying about stroking out in the middle of a session on Chuck. While I’m on the subject of my jewelry, however, I’ve got some stunning new sterling silver pieces up at the Etsy store as well as some very cool beaded and chainmail pieces, so please go take a look and help me feed the Horde of Five.

In other news, I worked on Shifter Woods: Growl, trimmed my beloved’s beard for him and then helped him dye it because ageism is rampant in the tech industry, and finished a Byzantine bracelet for a customer while watching Dr. Pimple Popper. Some very, very strange stuff grows under human skin, that’s for damn sure.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Amount of sweat: I could wring a good couple of tablespoons out of my hair right now.

I love my cats, I do. We never intended to have five at a time, but that’s just how it worked out and I’m okay with it most of the time.

Today is not part of that time. I am hot and sweaty because in addition to a metric buttload of paperwork and my time with Chuck I 1) went out to three different stores to get padded envelopes and 22g copper wire, 2) went back out in 99°F temps to water the back yard flowers and shrubs, 3) vacuumed the living room/library/foyer, 4) shampooed part of the carpet after Ramón accidentally had a beer bottle overflow in his hand (to his credit he cleaned up the spill with paper towels and those sani-wipes, but I know from experience that beer is sticky and the carpet would soon become encrusted, hence hauling out the carpet cleaner), 5) made a double-sized batch of gyro meatball mix (which was a huge pain in the ass but totally worth it — those meatballs are the BOMB), 6) proceeded to fry/bake the meatballs, 7) learned that the pitas Ramón had brought home had no pocket inside them so decided to dish up dinner ala tapas, and 8) unloaded/loaded the dishwasher.

All this time, I had Jeremy (aka the Orange Lump) and Jasmine (aka Skitty Kitty) glued to my side, my ankles, my lap, or whatever body part they could reach. I did comb Jemma earlier, but that was willingly on both sides and got a buttload of fur off her so totally worth it. But trying to prep food and and cook it with a large orange cat meowing loudly at you and planting his furry ass where you need to walk is not fun. And when you sit down in a desperate attempt to cool off and a small, skittish grey tabby insists on climbing on your lap desk/arm, it is, let us say, annoying. So I am going to take a shower, eat a piece of some kind of cake Ramón brought home as a treat, and go to sleep early.

Without cats, mind you.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Productivity level: Surprisingly high.

One of the useful things about belonging to a crack writing group is that 1) you can trust them to tell you the truth about your latest magnum opus, 2) you can rely on them to find ways to help you around stuck spots, and 3) you can brainstorm with them when you just don’t know what to do about a plot.

So, as you know (Bob), I’m working on Uncertainty Principle, which is the second book in my Pacifica Rising series. The first book, Degree of Resistance, was different from all of my other genre romance novels because it contained a hefty amount of SF, so much so that it kinda scared off the romance readers who didn’t understand why I put so much tech in there (and the SF readers said, “Is this a kissing book? Ew”). Mind you, Degree has gotten fantastic reviews from review sites, but it hasn’t sold very well because of that hefty SF element. Even the editor for that book said, “You know, this isn’t a Nicola book, despite the romance. It’s a Melanie book.”

And here I am, noodling around with the sequel. I’ve been trying to shoehorn in more romance (Evie and Ben are still the main couple, but there’s a secondary romance with security guard Rob and a refugee from another protectorate who turns out to be an assassin assigned to kill Ben and his daughter), but it’s not working. I just can’t get the book fired up, even though I know the plot pretty well, because I also have to deal with Ben’s incipient PTSD from being under chancellor control for twelve years and Evie’s discovery about her parents’ relationship with her nominal boss) . So I explained it to my writing group, and they all agreed that once again this is not a Nicola book, it’s a Melanie book, and I shouldn’t worry too much about making it an SF romance novel and just make it a romantic SF novel (where there’s a romantic side plot but the SF is the core of the story). And I think I’m going to have to do that because otherwise it just doesn’t work. Pity I can’t market the series as Melanie Fletcher now, but it’s a little too late for that.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Pain level: Knees are not happy, but they’re not at shiv level.

Gracious, I got a lot of stuff done today. Did promo for both books and jewelry, washed three loads of laundry, made a cabochon prong setting for a pendant, loaded a bunch of new jewelry into my Etsy site, shamelessly pimped To My Muse on Instagram, critiqued three chapters for a member of my writers group and spent an hour there eating Chinese food and going over the critiques, then came home and got my thirty minutes in on the treadmill. And while I was cooling off, I got a wild hair to see if I could put together a draft cover for the fourth novella in the Shifter Woods series (all four novellas will then be put into a box set, to be followed with a full-length novel sometime next year).

I kinda like the draft — still need to tweak some stuff, but it should work. The plot so far: single mom and cougar shifter Denise Elgin gets drawn into danger on Sandia Crest when a drug cartel head’s pet tiger gets loose during a gas stop and takes off into the woods. An accidental meeting while on a hike reveals that the “wild animal” is undercover FBI agent Marco Santos, a tiger shifter who’s been gathering evidence to bring the cartel down. Both Marco and Denise are shocked to discover they’re mates, but before they can indulge themselves they first need to evade the cartel’s men and make it back to civilization.

And now, I must take a shower and hit the sack. Until tomorrow, my chums.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Sinus condition: Seriously better after two neti pot sessions.

If I won the Powerball tomorrow, I would make a movie. No, I’m not talking about To My Muse, although I’d like to produce that at some point as well.

No, I would like to get some of my favorite actors together and let them do their thing. Here’s the plot as it stands — a former bassist in a well-known 70’s rock band (Louis Herthum) is now giving lessons in a NOLA music store, having a lethargic affair with the owner (Angela Bassett), and playing with local bands to pay the rent. To his bemusement, the band’s former manager (Brent Spiner) shows up one day at the store with an unrefusable offer — a current rock darling (Miley Cyrus) who is a huge fan of the band wants them to play with her at a major music festival. Manager also has the band’s drummer (Paul Guilfoyle) and his granddaughter (Priah Ferguson) in tow — the drummer is on the lam from the Boston mob due to a gambling debt.

Armed with a tour bus that has seen better days and equipment lent by the NOLA music store owner, bassist, drummer, and granddaughter go on the road to reunite the band for one last gig. Needless to say, this isn’t easy because the keyboardist (Jeffrey Combs) is newly retired from being a high school music teacher and just wants to stay home (his wife, however, wants him out of the house because he’s driving her nuts). I have a scene in my head where the bassist and drummer are standing on the keyboardist’s porch and knock on the door. Keyboardist opens it, takes one look at them, and slams it shut.

Bassist: (looks at drummer) That went well. (knocks on door again) Come on, man, open up.

Keyboardist: (muffled) Go away.

Bassist: Seriously, let us in. We’ve got a gig, a paying one. Rock Star Darling wants us to open for her.

Keyboardist: (muffled) Not interested.

Bassist: We’re talking a hundred grand.

Drummer: Minus Manager’s cut.

Bassist: (dirty look at Drummer) Really? You’re gonna do this now?

Keyboardist: (muffled) I’m calling the cops.

Drummer: (smirks) You know what we have to do.

Bassist: (sighs) Jeez. Okay.

They promptly start singing “If I Fell In Love With You” at the top of their lungs until the keyboardist lets them in.

Oh, and the lead guitarist (John Bishop) is a recovering alcoholic living with his daughter in Arkansas. They manage to get almost everyone on the bus, but the lead singer (Woody Harrelson), who is the bassist’s younger brother, has a sweet residency in Vegas and is not about to give it up. At that point an enforcer from Boston (Rory McCann) finally tracks them down, and the bassist fast-talks him into waiting until after the gig for the money — in exchange, he can tag along with them to guarantee that his boss gets paid (and maybe haul gear because hey, he’s big and strong). During a rehearsal warm, they find out that the enforcer can sing and press-gang him into the band. When Brother finds out he’s been replaced, he gets pissed off…

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten (I think the band originally broke up because the bassist stole his brother’s girlfriend and the guitarist OD’ed, but I’m not sure about that) but it’s keeping me entertained while I clean.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Exhaustion level: Better after my three-hour nap

Sometimes it helps to remind myself that I’ve done things like the parking job pictured at left. That’s in a British rental car, mind you, so it’s the “wrong” side of the road for me and there were literally less than eight inches of space between my car and the other two when I was done. Ramón was so astounded, he insisted that I take this picture for posterity to prove that I can achieve the impossible.

On days like this, I need that reminder. The day was not nearly as rewarding as I would have liked (no fault on anyone for this — it was just the nature of the venue), and the one book I sold pretty much paid for my gas, lunch, and drink on the way home. Oh, wait, I had to pay tolls, as well. So I was out of pocket on this event.

On the other hand, I managed to come home. Eighteen people who went to a Walmart in El Paso didn’t. So in the grander scheme of things I had a pretty damn good day. Also, please support background checks for gun purchases because this shit is out of control.