they must need bears

The hideousness of the death toll in Myanmar and China currently just boggles me. It is horrific and terrifying, and I'm sort of at a loss for words about the whole thing. Not that there's anything I can say about it, other than--if you have a few extra dollars, it wouldn't be a bad week to chip in to Doctors Without Borders.

---

and in the department of things-that-are-shatteringly-trivial-by-comparison, but-life-must-go-on:

Another bad climbing night yesterday. I managed two 5.7s I'd done before (One of them is overhung and I spend the whole damned time dogging on the rope, but I get there.), but my left big toe has been giving me trouble, and the damned thing started to hurt so badly after two routes that I bailed on the third one about ten feet up. Also, the left shoulder is not giving me the love, and my ankle is a little sore, I think from favoring the toe.

Blah. I really want to go for a run this morning, as it's still cool and pretty out there. But the smart thing is to stay home and give my foot and ankle a break. Blah!

I think I need to step up project less-of-me, because it would not hurt my joints to get an extra forty or sixty pounds off them before I expect them to manage this stuff I'm throwing at them. There's some sort of delicate balance between exercise, joint pain, serotonin reuptake, caloric intake, and how much owie I can reasonably expect my body to absorb with in the process of trying to keep it healthy that I need to strike here.

Hmm. I wonder how stupid it really would be, to go for a run. Screw it, we'll give it a try, and if it hurts too much, we'll stop.

I only got 500 words on Sunday, because of climbing at Ragged Mountain and personal obligations. Still, it's 500 words I didn't have before.

The climbing didn't go so well. We were having an extraordinarily bad rigging day, and only managed to get one route set up properly over the course of pretty much the whole afternoon. (Don't ask. *g*) Anyway, I did about thirty feet of it (a 5.8) before I hit a patch I couldn't get over. Or, I might have been able to get over it if I were stronger and less terrified. Which is the same as saying I couldn't get over it.

It shames me to admit it, but I am discovering that, so far (and unlike everybody else I know, real and fictional) I don't really like climbing outdoors. This may change as I get more confidence, but I currently find it entirely too scary to be fun. It's physically much easier than climbing indoors, but the adrenal response kicks my ass, and I find it very, very frustrating. (I'm not big on adrenaline, honestly: a little bit is okay, but large quantities make me feel like crap for days afterwards.) And then afterwards I'm very ashamed of being so scared of the whole production. Also, I'm a bug magnet, which I don't mind so much while hiking, but there's a lot of sitting around in this endeavor.

So today I'm tired and don't want to work and I didn't even accomplish much of anything yesterday.

Also, because the Yellow Face Burns Us, I picked up a sunburn, and today I have a sun headache. Because we were hiking up and down the damned rocks to try to rig and re-rig the ropes, though, I did get about 3.5 miles closer to Lothlorien.

If the weather isn't completely terrible, I'm going to try some indoor climbing tonight. Which means I should dose up on naproxen now, and hopefully the headache and neckache will go away and leave me be. And I'll keep plugging away at the outdoor thing, though it's mostly a time-eating pain in the ass right now. And you know, a thoroughly humbling experience, but pretty much everything in my life (guitar, work, relationships, the self-education of the writer) is that.

Art.

Man. Is there anything in the world, this side of raising children, that's a more humbling experience than making your living as an artist? It's so amazing to watch people respond so very differently to the exact same piece of work. One will call it cold and distant, another emotionally manipulative, a third sentimental, and the fourth will write to tell you that you have captured their experience exactly, and rain blessings upon your head for putting that in words upon the page.

It's enough to make you shrug your shoulders and write to please yourself, I tell ya. And yet, when I think about it, I have a pretty nice life. I get to spend my workdays in front of a picture window and eat garlic for lunch without my cubemate complaining. (She complains about everything else, but not my garlic breath.) And it's a nice job, making things. It feels like contributing, a little.

And now, I have to make bread and cook this pork roast before it goes bad, and also go write some pages.

Well, after a really good day climbing Monday, yesterday stank on ice. My left shoulder was bothering me a lot and the stomach did not like the cashews I had as a pre-climb snack, so I tried my project wall, and could barely even get on it, and then did two easy routes and watched Alisa and The Jeff climb for a while, and then came the hell home and watched Criminal Minds. Fail! But I will do better Monday.

Still, disappointing, as after Monday's general air of success I was hoping for another good day. Perserverance, however, is critical.

It's a cool, gray today with the promise of rain. I'm not going for a run, as I am declaring a recovery day (there may be climbing Saturday, if the weather is good, and there will be running tomorrow) but I might go for a walk later. If I get enough work done. And don't decide to curl up with a book instead.

Meanwhile, right now, I'm going to make coffee, shower, and see if I can get my words done early. There's archery tonight, after all. We'll see if my shoulder and neck are up to it. I'd like them to be, because I've been improving there, too, after a long plateau, and I don't want to lose ground.

Climbing yesterday, figured out what I was doing wrong on that traverse (Did you know there are two footholds at the part I got stuck at? Because, er. I didn't. And I was using the higher and further-away one, which got me all wrong-footed.), got past it, and got stuck where I had been stuck before. As near as I can tell, the next move is "Stick your left foot in your ear and then stand up on it."

Maybe Wednesday.

However, I did manage three other 5.7s, two of which I had done before, but one of which was brand new to me and I got it on the first try, albeit with two falls and some dogging on the rope. I think I can do it comfortably next time, though, though I already know I will still have to rest on the overhang. This excites me, because it means there are three 5.7s in the gym I can do comfortably enough that I don't kill myself on them. Which means I can probably mostly-retire that 5.6 I've been doing mostly so that I didn't have to stop after two or three routes, because god knows I need the endurance training and the exercise.

I came home from last Wednesday's climbing with a mystery bruise in the palm of my left hand, where the ring finger and pinky run into it. It wasn't particularly sore, though there is one achy, firm-feeling, paler spot in the middle there. It seems to be fading out, though, and it doesn't impede my grip strength, mobility, or fine control, so I think I'm not going to fuss about it. Probably just trained a tendon on that (%&*(^)*&^ traverse.

With a 6 mile hike Sunday and a 4.5 mile walk today (After the hike and the climbing, I decided to give my calves and toes a break from running) which included two miles under pack, as I was bringing my groceries home, I'm feeling pretty all right with the world.

Also, hey, did you know that when nothing's screwing with my biochemistry, I'm halfway sane? It's pretty exciting, is what.

174.9 miles to Lothlorien. I'm climbing to Redhorn Pass, fearing snow. (With good reason!) Memo to me: Bear, you suck! Practice guitar today.

And now, I am going to go terminate a bagel with lox, with extreme prejudice. And then maybe read some more Elizabeth Moon and do some actual work of my actual own.

Boy, what a beautiful morning. High thirties into low forties, clear and crisp, everything in bloom. Just gorgeous.

Two and a half miles this morning, and I did my first mile in 14:59. If you think I am smug about it, you would be right. Then the nine-minute loop of the park (I think it's actually longer than a half-mile, but gmaps pedometer says it's not), and then some stretching, and then mostly-walked the mile home in 16:47. I justify this to myself by means of the scorching (for me) time on the run out, the fact that I was going to stay home this morning, the fact that my shins and calves hurt, and sheer laziness. Also, it really is a pretty morning.

Climbing last night was better than Monday, despite ongoing lack of strength and soreness issues in my right arm. That traverse that I couldn't do and then I could do? I can't do it again, so I still have not finished that damned blue 5.7. Even though it's a short wall, it's tricky. I did however finish a fairly long 5.7 with a similar traverse that used to completely kick my ass (and I felt secure the whole time, though I had to stop and rest), and also a 5.7 and a 5.6 on the slab, both of which I have done before. I tried a 5.8 and couldn't get off the ground, so I fell back and did the 5.6 on the same wall, which is sort of a bunny wall overhang. It's overhung, but you can barely tell. Still, it will help make me strong enough that I can tackle the overhang on the black 5.7 that is my other project wall. The Jeff is after me to try a 5.7 on the tree wall that he likes. It looks like absolutely no fun at all, but I will probably adopt that one as a new project once I finish one of these other two. It has to happen sooner or later, right?

I have a hell of a bruise on the palm of my left hand. Wheeugh. No idea how I got it, either.

189.9 miles to Lothlorien.

In other news, I appear to be cured. Right. Not taking those pills any more. Man. It's been donwright pleasant and spacious inside my head for the last two days.

And now I need a shower and some food and tea and some work on "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood," which is standing at around 1000 words currently. Because hey, progress is good.

Good running day today: Made the (uphill) mile out in 16:04 including a pause for street-crossing, and jogged the whole thing except the first two blocks. Walked a half mile around the park in 8:56 (taking my time), stretched for five minutes, and ran the (downhill) mile back in 13:31. I had to drop to a walk for a tenth of a mile breather on the way back, but I made it up at the end, so I still ran 9/10 of the mile, and actually hit a pretty good spot of competence for about a block at the end there. A tenth of a mile of feeling pretty good! That's not to be scoffed at!

It was raining steadily on the way out, broken sun through the overcast on the way back. The dogwoods are in full bloom and the lilacs are starting--didn't those used to be May/June flowers?

Running in the rain is so much easier and nicer than running when it's sunny out. This will improve as the trees along my route leaf out, but for the time being, I need to get out earlier in the morning, dammit.

After Sunday's climbing (sent a 5.4 that was actually more like twenty-five feet of 5.6 and then twenty-five feet of 5.4; flamed out spectacularly fifteen or twenty feet up a 5.7+, flamed out less spectacularly maybe 25 feet up on a 5.6 with a chimney, due to the fact that my toes hurt so much I couldn't put weight on them any more) I came home and slept from 10 pm to 8:30 the next morning, which is unheard of for me.

So I couldn't fall asleep until 1 or 2 last night, and though I did wake up at six this morning, but since I had had a triggery night of hypervigilance and kept waking up every time anybody in the entire apartment building got a drink of water, I decided to pull the cat over my head and go back to sleep for another two hours.

Somebody from Massachusetts recently had a rather spectacular single-car accident where I enter the park. I can tell he was from Massachusetts, because he left his license plate behind. Sadly, he also shattered an old granite curb and took out two or three of the old Victorian neighborhood's beautiful slate paving blocks, which means the broken ones will be replaced with cement eventually. Entropy makes me sad.

Climbing last night was less than spectacular. I managed two 5.6s on the slab (one of them, the last, with a lot of pathetic flail at the top) and a 5.6 on the wall, and quit after that because my tennis elbow (which, in true me fashion, I gave myself while wielding a sledgehammer on my 35th birthday, go me) was acting up. Climbing two days in a row? Still brutal. (You should see the bruises on my knees from wedging my leg into that chimney on Sunday.)

Today's work is varied. I need to finish the final or nearly-final draft of "Overkill," get started on the new Secrit Projekt (tentatively titled, "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood") the opening paragraph of which came to me on my run, do laundry, blurb two things, pay a credit card bill, join the Ragged Mountain Foundation, file some tax paperwork, call my lawyer, email my agent, and make bread. Maybe I will try cvillette's pretzel bread recipe, though I have to buy butter if I am going to do that.

Full day. I guess that means I should get started, huh?

In case, like me, you were waiting up for it, episode 1x06 of Shadow Unit, Emma Bull's awesome "Endgames," is live.

For those of you who are much more interested in kitty pictures, here are some photos of the Presumptuous Cat taken today by batwrangler today:

Monkey?

Monkey.

Monkey!

Banana!!!

Huh?

We went climbing outside today. If a day without a bruise is wasted, then today must be a banner day.

I missed pixel-stained technopeasant wretch day (observed). However, since you can find a great deal of my work online for free here at my webpage, and of course there's the Shadow Unit project, in all its guiltware glory, which is not just me but also Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, Emma Bull, and Will Shetterly!

---

So I managed my first 5.7 without a single fall yesterday. I'm pretty proud of myself. It was on the slab wall, but I did it. Also, my endurance is improving--I can keep coming back at something now after I've failed it repeatedly, so I got a second 5.7. (I've sent this one before, but I did it much better this time. Though with several rests, and a bunch of falls at the crux.) I need to go back and try that pink 5.7 again (the first one I ever got, which I still can't do without rests and a couple of falls) and also the blue route I haven't quite got, even though I think I know how to do it. Knowing and being able, alas, are not always the same thing. (Also, there's a black 5.7 that I couldn't doo before because the overhang kicked my ass, but I'm stronger now, so I want to try it again. It's not a technically difficult route: the rating is mostly for RAAAAAAAAAAR!, and my RAAAAAAAAAAR! is improving.)

But there's a 5.8 Alisa wants me to try Monday, so it's possible the other hard wall I'm working on will wait until Wednesday. I am scared of the 5.8. It has an overhang and the entire top half is smearing up a wall where the only handholds are this crack you have to lay back on.

La.

There may be climbing outdoors on Sunday. That would be fun.

(Apparently, I have accidentally started something of a climbing renaissance among my writer friends, which I think is pretty cool. We are the buff chicks of SFF. Also, the new face thereof.)

---

Spring lasted a week this year, and I was in Michigan for it. The plum tree under my bedroom window is in full bloom, and violets and dandelions and tulips are all over the place. The Bradford pears are nearly over; the magnolias are already dropping blossoms. A mulberry along my running route is putting out first leaves, and the lilacs have heavy clusters of buds. I'm going to have to start running earlier, because it's already too hot by 8.

3.5 miles Tuesday (I only ran about 1.5 of those and walked the rest) and 2 miles today (ran 1 mile, walked 1. My lungs do not like the pollen and humdidity. Foolish lungs.) 204.9 miles to Lothlorien.

---

Meanwhile, I am reading "Endgames" and working on "Overkill," and working on the page proofs for All the Windwracked Stars. So there is actual professional work-related progress going on, which is a nice thing. Then after that a novelette for a Secrit Projekt (I promise I will tell you all about it as soon as I can) and a novella for Subterranean. And then maybe I will have gotten enough distance on Chill to come back to it with some Mad Skillsh and make it a Book That Works.

Other work that awaits me in the next year--rewriting By the Mountain Bound and One-Eyed Jack & the Suicide King, and then rewriting The Sea thy Mistress.

I'm having a very hard time seeing anything positive in my writing currently, which is frustrating and hard. Mostly, it all feels quite banal and amateurish to me. Flaccid, even. Where is the muscular prose of yore? Where is my ability to characterize obliquely and well? I feel confident when editing other people's work, but of my own all I can say is Dreadful! Dreadful! DREADFUL!

It's hard to write when you can't see what's working anymore. It gets in the way of that "carve off everything that doesn't look like an elephant" thing when the elephant is no longer visible to your inner eye.

In a move unusual for me, I actually went back to bed this morning and slept for another two hours instead of going out for a run. Climbing last night kicked my ass, and since ashacat and I have plans to go for a walk this afternoon and tonight is archery night I decided I could skip it. I'll run tomorrow.

I was up until 2 am, I am fighting off the carnal interest of the local herbiage with my sinuses, and my neck is killing me. Screw it: sleep was good.

To make up for Monday's good climbing night, last night I stank up the place. Well, I lie. My balance was good, but I had no upper body strength at all, and was back to wiping out on that traverse I sailed through on Monday.

That made me sad and frustrated. I suspect I hadn't recovered from Monday yet. Muscle fibers still repairing themselves from the last round of micro-tears.

Anyway, after I went back to bed I had another dream (two remembered dreams in one week!), this one involving a remarkably inept King in Yellow attempting to force his way through a revolving door to get to me, accompanied by a couple of broad-headed robot Tindalosi, while I hid in a sealed and stained and Goffick corridor on a derelict space station. He wasn't particularly scary, though, because he had tiny little arms and his ragged hump was stuck in the door, so he just kept going around and around, and since the Tindalosi were on leashes, he dragged them through with him. They didn't mind, though: they squish into cracks.

I eventually got out by squeezing through a side door which had a rather long security chain.

My subconscious is quite pleased with itself, as it seems to think it has told me something Vitally! Important! about Chill. What that vitally important thing might be, I am really not sure yet, but it will no doubt come. At least it's nice to know the book is back there cooking. Sometimes you can't tell if there's anything going on in there, even if you lift the lid and peek.

Now I think I will make another travel CD for my Very Long Drive to Penguicon. Something with a lot of Mark Knopfler on it, for signing along purposes. And I will shower. And I will wonder why people are jackhammering my sidewalk this morning. 

Hmm. Looks like the MDC.

Oops.

My recovery time at the climbing gym is getting a lot better. Some of that might be the running--though after only two weeks, it seems hasty to say so. But I did six climbs tonight, sent five of them, and I'm just three or four moves from the top of this 5.7 I've been fighting for Some Time Now. The next move I need to make is a power move, a layback where the foothold is at hip height and tricky to balance on, and which will require a good deal of strength, especially since I need to use the momentum to lunge up to the next handhold. I reached it repeatedly, but I couldn't stick it. Even when I got mad at it.

And since it's near the top of the wall, of course I'm already burned out when I get there.

However! I did get past the infamous traverse without falling. Resting yes. Falling no. Which makes me awfully happy.

And in certain circumstances, I'm actually starting to feel confident and like I know what I'm doing up there. There was a bit of a traverse of the slab wall that would have given me serious trouble a month ago, and I just sailed right through it tonight.

That makes me happy.

And now, OMG, I need to eat something.

Never has the subtitle of this blog (it's a great life if you don't weaken) felt more appropriate. Jeepers.

The progress notes will be informal today.

I was going to give myself a day off from running today, but I woke up at 6 am raring to go, so I got up and drank some water and answered my email and put my shoes on. I jogged the entire first mile (at a crawl, mind you) with the exception of the first two blocks, which I walked as a warmup. It was cold out--widget on my taskbar says 28 degrees F--and since I was out there by 7:20, the light was beautiful. Still, a whole mile! My cardio was great at the end of it, too--I took five minutes to stretch and recover, but I didn't really need them. I did make myself stretch for the whole five minutes though, temptations aside.

And then I ran/walked back on fire hydrant intervals (five of them) and took the last three blocks as a cool down. Time out: 16 minutes. Time back: 13 minutes. So when I say that joggy bit was a crawl, it was a crawl.

I was pretty ineffectual at the climbing gym last night--four routes, including a 5.7 I didn't finish. There's a traverse out from under a corner that is killing me. Also, I did a 5.5 with a small overhang that was the first route I ever sent, way back wen, and did not fall off the place where I always fall off. (Yeah, it's only a 5.5, but it's a 5.5 that involves dragging yourself out from under a corner with only one foothold, which is in a bad place.) Scraped up my right arm pretty good falling off a climb on the slab wall, but got back on the horse and finished it. Go team me.

The climbs helped break up the lingering anxiety. Some of it was back this morning, but I'm hoping the run will have taken it out of me. And I have PT today, and ashacat and I are going to see Jonathan Coulton tonight, so--those will also help.

On to the stuff that may actually interest some of you. I talked to my agent last night and got permission to suspend work on Chill for a while. Whether this means I won't make the June 1 deadline or not, I don't know yet. We'll see what happens in May. But I'm giving the book the rest of April to percolate, in the hopes that that will help me work through some of my issues surrounding it.

In further proof that it is, in fact, this damned novel that is killing me, I woke up this morning not only in a mood to write, but with a head full of stuff for the scene in "Ballistic" that I was swearing only yesterday I could in no wise write, for lo I was a burnout case and probably should be taken out behind the chemical sheds and put out of everyone's misery. I also figured out in the car last night (I should really list the Moby Smurfberry as my co-author, I do so much thinking in that buggy) one of the things that is turning Chill into such a fucking nightmare of a novel to write, why I keep glancing off its surface, and why I feel like I can't get into any of the characters at all.

Because the thematic arc that I find myself swearing up and down the book doesn't actually have is there, buried, and it's all about a bunch of people who grew up in a tremendously abusive, exploitive household, and the ways those experiences have affected them.

So here I am, writing all these damaged beauties, and no wonder my subconscious really doesn't want to let me inside their heads right now, considering what the last two years of my own headspace have entailed.

Stupid books as therapy. I dudn't want therapy. I just wanted a nice block of flats rollicking adventure novel.

Permission not to be working on the manuscript feels like somebody pulled a giant wodge of Kleenex out of my brain. Stupid book I am not ready to write yet. Why can't you be more like your brother?

And hey, I only have about 150 pages left to write. When it comes unstuck, I can do that standing on my head, right? :-P

Anyway, I have three sets of page proofs this moth, and two conventions, so It's not like there won't be enough work to keep me busy. And maybe the b&#k can use that time productively, to sort out its issues, so when we try to get back together there's a chance we can make this thing work.

233.9 miles to Lothlorien

And now I am going to go take off this sports bra before it cuts off circulation to my brain, and shower, and practice guitar before I go to PT.

Last night, ashacat and I went to the venerable and redoubtable Eastern Mountain Sports, a local New England outdoor sports equipment Emporium--notable for employing a dedicated and knowledgeable assortment of ski bums, climbing bums, hiking bums, kayaking bums, etc.--to buy her shoes and harness.

Meanwhile, I've been making noises for a while about cancelling my gym membership (BORING) and taking up running again, in the full knowledge that this will be a process full of misery and despair.

See, I used to be a runner. I was never a very competitive runner, because I don't have the build for speed, but I loved trail running, and I was adequate at middle distances. (If I were a football player, I would probably make a pretty good halfback, let's put it that way. Good Eastern European stock: "When ox die, harness wife to plow.")

I suck at jogging, mind you. I'm not good enough at pacing myself to jog. I like to run.

I had a lot of joint problems in high school and college, and while I could still manage endurance sports like racewalking and hiking (at least until the bout with mono), my knees and hips wouldn't take the impact of running. (It turned out not to be lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or half a dozen other things, and eventually I walked out with a diagnosis of juvenile onset osteoarthritis, a naproxen prescription, and a cane. These days, they'd probably call it fibromyalgia. However, since it went into spontaneous remission in my twenties after a heavy course of antibiotics for a lung infection, I now harbor suspicions that what I had was chronic Lyme disease. Anyway, that's all backstory.)

Well, EMS is in the throes of their winter clearance, and what with one thing and another, while the ashacat was trying on climbing shoes, I walked out with the pair of North Face trail runners that were marked down almost into my price range, and two pairs of Smartwool running socks. (I also got two pairs of hiking socks, because dammit, there will be hiking this summer.)

These are very silly shoes. The innovative lacing system is, well, a winch. And a bunch of very fine cables run through the body of the shoe, all of which tighten when you twist the little wheel on the heel. Silly, yes.

But wow, do they fit. And I think the socks weigh more.

So this morning, I did something I haven't done in twenty years. I got up, put on my workout pants and the sort of scary-ass sports bra a DD-girl needs for running in, put on my socks and shoes, grabbed a t-shirt, put my hair in a ponytail, and went for a two-mile run in the rain.

It wasn't an unbroken two mile run, mind you--I've been hitting the treadmill and the ski machine at the gym, but that's not a thing like actually getting out and running over slate sidewalks in the early morning mist. But I managed six intervals (I didn't time--I just ran until my chest and arches hurt too much, and then I stopped and walked until I could run again. Got to the halfway point, stopped for five minutes of stretching and begging to die, and turned around and came back.

Two miles in twenty-five minutes, not counting the five minutes of stretching. Not a great time, by any means, but a beginning. And I have a 5.2-mile route mapped out for Eventually. (It's my walking route when I am going for a walk to go for a walk, not as an adjunct to errands downtown, so I know it well.)

So I ran this morning in the rain, through the old part of town with the ancient trees and the slate sidewalks. And I'm already looking out the window at the rain, wishing I were back out there.

Tomorrow, I may see if I can do it again.

240.7 miles to Lothlorien

And now I need to go take a shower, start some laundry, and get to work on this book I'm supposedly writing.

I think she was a middle distance runner.
The translation wasn't clear.

So there was climbing tonight, and tomorrow there needs to be:

Voting
Muffins
Potato curry
The rest of the CEM
Guitar practice

I think that's all.

(I'm voting for Clinton, after much waffling, because of a series of balance points that fell in her favor. (1) I will be more-or-less equally happy with her or Obama, and a 1-2 ticket in either direction will make me ecstatic. I'm hoping for Edwards as AG, and I want to see Bush's mad rush to pardon everybody and his dog on his last day in office. Why? Schadenfreude, baby. (2) Statistically speaking, women will vote with equal preference for female or African-american candidates, but the reverse is not true, and I would at this point feel like I was letting the side down if I didn't vote for her when I had the chance. (3) Yeah, yeah, it's always the wife or widow or daughter of some guy who used to have the job who first holds a high elected office, but then we get used to it and get on wth our lives. (4) Clinton political machine? Well, sure, and? You maybe have noticed the political machines all around us.... (5) Clinton/Bush dynasty? Well, the Clintons would still need to put Chelsea on the ticket as Veep in 2016 to catch up with the Bushes. Or, in other words, oh whatever. Typical Republican propoganda where whatever they do is just fine until the Dems try the same thing, and if Jeb Bush stood a chance, we wouldn't have heard a peep about it. (6) I've been defending her since the fucking chocolate chip cookies, okay? And I'm not about to stop now. (7) I can always vote for Obama in 2016. And will, also.

Either way, I have noticed this trend where former Republican presidents/veeps retire to their ranches, and former Democratic presidents/veeps are awarded Nobel peace prizes.

Not that it signifies, of course.

(And I plan to ignore all comments arguing with my politics, so go ahead and squawk, but don't feel hurt when I don't answer.)

The climbing went well. I sent two 5.6s and a 5.7 on the slab wall that I had not managed before, which was satisfying and also convinced me that I really need to work on my smearing. I got much higher on my project wall (the 5.7 with the mild overhang) but I just do not have the hand strength for that damned thing yet. It will come. However, I could actually see how to do the next move, I think-- I just didn't have strength to do it. And I got over the points that I had been sticking on. I did fail on a 5.7 that I have done twice before, but that was because I was so wiped out after the overhang. And in the process of sorting out that second 5.7, I intellectualized something I must have done by accident before, so next time I will know how to mke the move rather than just guessing.

I sent my first 5.7 tonight. Although there were two instances of dogging on the rope and shaking my arms, trying to restore feeling to my fingers, and my right elbow is still having words with me about it, each time the problem was never actually not knowing what to do next: it was, each time, not being strong enough to do it.

This may not sound like a major advance, but trust me, it is.

And we will just pretend that all the whimpering and crying were on purpose.

And I came home to a preliminary sketch for the All the Windwracked Stars cover art. It's gorgeous..I can't wait until I can show you a final version.

Well, I got past the crux of the 5.7 that is my current project wall, and I think I have actually figured out the easy and elegant way to do it. This makes me happy, because I have been working on it for Some Time Now.

Unfortunately, the rest of the wall is an overhang, and I don't yet have the strength or technique to hold myself on it. So I've got the first fifteen feet or so, and I'm just gonna have to keep pushing to get the rest. Ah well. If it were easy, it wouldn't be fun.

My smearing is getting a lot better, though. I have nice fat fleshy high-volume feet that make my life easy on the slab wall. I somehow suspect my first 5.7 will be one of the ones on the slab. There's actually at least one route on that wall that I can do in a thoughtful and organized fashion at this point, and feel very secure on the wall. Feeling secure on the wall is very awesome.

They took down all my 5.6s! All of them! Except the one that everybody in the gym including the staff agrees is really a 5.7+ or a 5.8, but they haven't relabeled it. (Actually, it might be a 5.6 if you have a lot of brute force to throw at it. But maybe not so much on technique. There is an awful lot of hauling yourself up by your hands with no footholds, however.)

Oddly enough, as if it were exercise, climbing makes you hungry.

1023 more words on the WTF story I need to write... next January. Thank you, brain. No, I'm not complaining.

But maybe consider thinking about the novel now?