Boring people should be seen and not heard
I went to a picnic with friends today. A particular kind of friend – the kind who brought along a spare pair of wings for Louisette to wear on the castle playground at Canberra’s Commonwealth Park. Which is to say, the cool kind of friend. The peculiar kind. [Found out later that the wings are for sale here.]
Normally I’d say peculiar is the kind of person I am, not to mention the kind that I like. Which is why I made the effort to push past my leaving-the-house panic and my I’m-too-fat-to-be-seen-in-public panic, and I got there – counting on my friends to pull me out of my fear into a nice day.
The first two minutes went great. I knew a lot of the people there, I wasn’t the only one in a corset, and everyone was sharing finger food that Louisette likes (so her boring old sandwich never had to emerge from our bag to be rejected and/or smeared on her new dress).
But within five minutes of ordinary conversation I was told to switch conversation topics. Immediately. For everyone’s sake. I asked if I was allowed to finish the sentence – the punchline – and was told no.
I don’t get to talk to adults very much – other than CJ after his long day of talking to adults too much – and most of what goes through my head is stuff to do with children or writing, both of which are seriously dull to most of the world. CJ and I watch a lot of TV – mostly fantasy/action with a bit of comedy satire. My third conversation topic is TV, which can backfire badly if your friends don’t watch all the same TV programs in the same sequence at the same time. But I’m up to date with certain bits of the news.
Before I was cut off, I was talking about a couple of genuinely absurd moments in politics lately – one in New York, and the second in Australia. Namely, that a mayoral candidate in NY was known as the kitten-hating candidate after saying it was stupid to have stopped trains for two hours to protect a pair of stray kittens; and that our new PM Tony Abbott (infamous for his awkwardness around any woman) has appointed himself minister for women’s affairs.
I won’t get into grading my own conversational skills, because I know they’re below par, but I wasn’t doing any harm and didn’t deserve to be told to shut up.
I’m glad I made the effort to leave the house, because I try to go to Floriade (or more specifically, just outside Floriade) each year, especially since Louisette was born. I’ll remind myself in future that peculiarity and rudeness can often go hand in hand.
I can’t remember if I mentioned here yet that my Mirena is gone and I’m improving rapidly (I’m back at work, for one thing). All the side effects (hopefully including the balance issues that caused me to almost fall and crush another friend’s small child today – poor guy had to actually catch me before dealing with his upset child) should be a memory in a few more weeks.
Psychology and a New Kangaroo
Today I decided to experiment on my child. Because SCIENCE. I taught her – in a matter of seconds – to make a sad face or a happy face on cue. This was incredibly easy, and although she was a lot quicker and more accurate if I made a sad face at her and cued her with the popular phrase, “Oh no!” (which, to be fair, most toddlers utter with macabre glee rather than sadness), I believe she is now able to simply fake sadness with a purely verbal clue. (Happiness is easy at her age, particularly as she knows she’s just learned a new trick.)
She is not yet twenty months old.
This means that, from the age of one – ONE – we understand emotion well enough to manipulate our own facial expressions accurately. . . . and we can use our faces to skilfully lie about how we feel.
It also, in practical terms, means that when I sense her cry of pain/frustration/whatever has passed the initial burst of real emotion, I can turn to Louisette and say, “Happy face!” and some of the time she really will just get over it and move on. I’ve already done it once today, and I suspect it’ll be super useful during the period when she uses her brand new ability to talk purely for the purpose of 24-7 whining. (“Happy face!” and a tickle attack is somewhat nicer than the, “Be quiet”/”That’s enough”/”Talk nicely” which are honest and reasonable but less fun and therefore less effective.)
I did a little bit of writing today, after begging CJ for help plot-wise yesterday, and filling in some huge holes. My writing is going to be much, much better with one simple strategy: Beside my Plot Plan I’ll have a Character Plan for where the main character starts and ends up psychologically, and why. And of course the two plans will constantly interact. (I also have a “Where are they/what are they doing at this point” plan for all the villains and other off-screen characters.)
I just sat down and wrote a floor plan for a castle. That was cool.
One-Fifth(ish)
Louisette with a friend’s baby.
I’m just under what I estimate to be one-fifth of the novel’s length. A comment CJ made about the Avatar: Airbender movie (which I can paraphrase as, “Aaaaaarrrgh!” but it was actually a clever critique on character building) made me realise how I can make my writing so much, much better. Is this it? Is this the secret book-writing macguffin I had in the attic the whole time?
Doubtful. But also a little bit possible. So maybe this book isn’t absolutely definitely destined for long and grinding failure. (Sidebar: Publisher B – who I guarantee you will have heard of – basically told me outright that they’d take another few years to bother reading my young adult steampunk novel. Thanks guys!)
Yesterday and today I spent most of my day home alone – a rare and wonderful thing – due to deciding I was too depressed (from the Mirena) to be up to scratch when dealing with children. I’m not sure I’ll go in to work at all next week.
The writing went pretty well today. My body gets painful if I sit in a chair for more than about half an hour (half an hour in a chair = 24 hours of mild pain), and my concentration is largely shot (even without Louisette in the house, I was listening out for the wake-up cry from the next room). It’s a different writing experience to my manic marathons pre-motherhood. I still wrote several thousand words, which is still a lot – and I don’t even think they suck, which is pretty surprising.
It’s hard to tell what my life is actually like, because I’m definitely not seeing straight reality-wise (it’s a depression thing). I’ve even had a couple of reality-gap moments, when I confused myself with Louisette (I was changing her the other day, and felt really good about how fit my belly looked – then realised it was her belly that looked good. Stuff like that).
Hmm…having written this, I don’t think I’ll be going to work until the Mirena is gone. I just hope the specialist is actually able to remove it, or it could be many more weeks.
Conversation
Well, my novel is now standing at just over 10,000 words. The plot and the characters are all on screen. Wish them luck (or not…)
Here’s a conversation I just had with CJ (the context is that we plan to start trying for another kid at some point in the next six months. Also, CJ has hoarder tendencies and I have OCD tendencies, so I’m constantly making him throw stuff out):
CJ: Are kids like shirts? Every time we get a new one we have to throw one away?
Me: Only if we have more than five.
Felicity Banks 