Pregnancy: The monster is not dead
A few weeks ago I had a pregnancy scare. It even sort of made it to the blog – I wrote on a Wednesday that I’d had lots of weird aches and pains, and was walking with a limp. At the same time I was very ill with a stomach bug (or was it something more?) I even managed to be four days late (very unusual for me) – but I’m not pregnant. Thank goodness. Although I look forward to meeting our future second child, this is *NOT* a good time!
And yet, the pain continues.
Pregnancy hormones can take a LONG time to leach out of one’s system – and given that my body is so fond of pregnancy hormones (the more the better) it’s little wonder that they’re still around in big enough quantities to be causing significant problems. Even when it’s been well over six months since I de-pregnantified.
I mentioned a limp. After vacillating for a while, it decided to dig in and get worse and worse. It became very difficult to walk, or pick up Louisette (which I do dozens of times a day) or walk up or down stairs (we have stairs between the bedroom/bathroom and the kitchen/living area – so again, dozens of times a day). The combination of baby plus walking plus stairs was very painful.
Last Friday I saw a physio and found out that the back pain was all referred pain from my left hip joint, which had separated due to – guess what! – pregnancy hormones (specifically my old friend relaxin, who causes muscles to flollop about in preparation for birth). She helped a bit (and I ruined it within hours due to looking after Louisette) and gave me exercises to do.
On Saturday and Sunday I didn’t lift Louisette once. On Monday and Tuesday I camped out downstairs as much as possible, keeping Louisette on my bed where I fed her, changed her, put her to sleep, and entertained her by any means necessary:
I *am* improving despite the impossibility of true rest, and I even managed to get a job (at a house with a ridiculous number of stairs). It’s horrifying but encouraging to know that hormones really are to blame for my startlingly still-pregnant-looking belly. . . at least there’s still hope for the distant future. All I can really do is lump this in with all the rest of the pregnancy horrors I thought I was done with, and say what I’ve always said about the horrors of pregnancy: It’s totally worth it.
My job is minding two young and adorable girls who live very close by. I started yesterday, and it is not merely survivable but highly enjoyable. Louisette is more than welcome – the girls chose me partly because they wanted to play with her – and she loves having new people to admire her.
Speaking of Louisette, she’s become very fond of blowing slobbery raspberries to express either disapproval or delight. That’s a lot of raspberries.
Vampire hunters, villains, and dolls
Lovely links to lovely pictures from Steampunk on facebook.
In other news, I got a job that starts today – part time babysitting, and I get to take Louisette with me. Win!
Diverting power to the main grid
I seem to be strangely busy these days*so I’ve decided to cut down on blogging a teensy bit. Those readers who’ve been around for a while (or who noticed that I still blogged while on my honeymoon/in labour/etc) will be stunned at this development, while the rest of you will be left wondering, “And the big deal is. . . ?”
The blog will be silent on weekends from this week onwards. The “articles by others” (usually on writing, usually with my comments) will be moved to Thursdays, and “Steampunk Sundays” will be moved to the somewhat less alliterative Tuesdays (from tomorrow – so you’ll score two steampunk days this week). Mondays will remain Miscellaneous (including any awesomenesses that deserve the name), Wednesdays all about Louisette, and Fridays will still be all about book reviews.
* I wonder why
This-abled: A Steampunk Story
I promised you something seriously excellent, and here it is.
It’s a story done in pictures with live models. Here’s just one sample picture from partway through:
Handy International Resource
This site has a LOT of publishers, and is searchable by genre. It’s somewhat skewed towards the USA and UK, but us antipodeans often publish overseas (for the moolah) anyway.
Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox
Okay, first up, a confession: I’m heartily sick of time travel tales. They’re just silly (as my Mum pointed out, “If we were ever going to invent time travel, we’d know about it”) and there are too many of them. This has three things in its favour: 1. It’s magic (which actually makes it far less silly – technobabble is unwanted and mercifully unnecessary). 2. It’s a story pitting Artemis against Artemis, which is cool. 3. It’s Eoin Colfer, and I trust him to spin a good yarn.
The rest of the review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
Half a year!
Can you believe it?!?! Louisette is already six months old. Project 365 (taking a photo every day for a year) is half over. Things continue to change rapidly: she is taking her first crawling steps (legs only), she says, “Mum” when she wants me to come, and she can sit up unsupported quite happily. It’s a terrifying and thrilling time as she gains the ability to actively promote her own self-destruction.
(Earlier photos can be found at one month, two, three, four and five.)
And the winner is. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . not me!
D’oh!
This isn’t the first time I’ve been this close to publication, and it most likely won’t be the last (although I hope it’ll be the last time I get this close and don’t get published). Text Publishing was kind enough to tell the shortlisted entrants the final result well before the party last night, and I decided to attend anyway.
I arrived in Melbourne as the sun set. . .
. . . and left the following morning.
The party happened at the Carlton Hotel (which, sidebar, is not a hotel – as I discovered the day after I thought I’d booked a room there. By sheer good luck, my ACTUAL hotel – Rydges on Exhibition Street – was a five minute walk away). The function room was up many many stairs, and reminded me uncannily of a Russian brothel I once stumbled into while holidaying in Beijing (true story). The walls were mirrored, but the mirrors were almost obscured by masses of floor-to-ceiling pink leopard spots. A few feature walls were coated liberally in extremely dusty plastic plants of the wide-leaved tropical variety – which were also jammed into nooks and crannies around doorways and among ceiling paraphernalia. Oh, and there was a life-size model of an elephant’s head attached to one wall. Because why not? It all felt rather trippy and imaginary.
I met a LOT of authors, most (or possibly all) of the Text publishing staff, lots of teachers or people who work in the reading biz, and a married couple who own a large chain of bookstores (which, incidentally, are doing very well thanks very much). I had a suspicion going in that Text Publishing as a whole might be a little too literary for my books – people do tend to be either into literary work or into genre work, which I find peculiar. Unfortunately that turned out to be very true: although they’re open to fantasy and have certainly published some, not a single person on staff really loves fantasy. I spent quite a bit of time talking to “the fantasy person” – who actually flinched when I said the phrase “fantasy geek”. She gave me some really excellent editorial comments which could easily take six months to fix (the good kind of “Arg!” in my world).
I do happen to have one rather experimental non-fantasy book that I think would be perfect for Text, so I’ll be sending that off to them within days. I also took advantage of the moment to ask for a job – but they do everything (including slush reading and gallery proofing) in-house and on actual physical paper. So that’s a shame.
And then, as the party began to wind down and I realised I’d met everyone in the room except for two people. . . I met Andy Griffiths. Yes, that Andy Griffiths. Very cool!
I’m home again now, blurry with excitement and sleeplessness, and very pleased to be seeing these blue eyes again after a twenty-four hour gap.
I’m too tired to post the usual month of Louisette photos today – I’ll do that tomorrow.
I also had a great time talking to last year’s Text Prize winner Myke Bartlett, and having him sign an advance copy of his book for me. I’ll be reviewing it here on Friday next week.
Getting “The Call”
I mentioned last week that I’d just received some Rather Good News. Here’s how it happened:
The sun didn’t rise – just clouds and rain, rain, rain on yesterday’s washing. The forecast was for more rain tomorrow, and the day after that. A grey day.
Louisette was sick, and woke me before dawn. I thought I’d recovered from several days of illness, but I was sick twice before I reached her room. Woke CJ to take care of her while I was unable to move from the bathroom. A day of cramps and stench, and an unhappy child left to cry on the floor more than once while mummy was sick.
Nappy after stinking nappy needed to be taken directly to the outside bin, and the rain kept falling. Louisette had nappy rash that made her cry, and I gave up on one product and tried another. I SMSed family members one by one, seeing if anyone could come over and help – to hold Louisette’s bottle while I was sick; stroke her hair when she cried in pain. A day of moving my one pathetic hour of paid work to another day, and crossing my fingers hoping that day was better.
Her feet and hands were cold, and so were mine. Had to leave the bathroom window and door open despite the cold and the danger of our jealous cat expressing herself on the bathroom floor (again). I picked “Fahrenheit 451” from the bookshelf to read while putting Louisette to bed, having just finished the last of the Terry Pratchetts. I thought, “If only I could write this well.” I wondered if I’d eat dinner, and knew I wasn’t healthy enough to run errands. SMSed CJ to pick up some groceries on his way home. A day of going back to bed the instant Louisette closed her eyes, and then waking up to her cries and another urgent series of trips to the loo.
I checked the mail in the pouring rain, because today might just be the day I get a letter from a publisher saying they want to publish one of my books.
It wasn’t the day.
My first attempt at a lunch I could stomach tasted of raw flour (the pack also split when I picked it up and I left slippery white footprints all over the kitchen floor), and by the time the second was ready Louisette was crying for an early feed. I changed her and calmed her and held her while I finished the cold remnants of my food. Her nappy leaked and I put that outfit in the “spray it first” pile. Then I changed her again, and she wet herself, her clothes, her wrap, and the change table right at that perfect, naked moment. A day of doing the washing despite the endless rain, and putting every bit of it in the dryer until the laundry walls were slick with moisture.
A tradesman arrived unannounced – our flat is being sold, and there is a seemingly endless series of jobs that are happening to our home whether we want them or not. He glanced at the flour on the kitchen floor and didn’t say a word. A day of pretending my PJs were regular clothes, and hoping the man whose name I couldn’t remember didn’t notice I wasn’t wearing a bra.
I sat on the floor and cuddled the baby. I put on more nappy cream, washed my hands extra carefully, and gave her medicine to ease the pain of teething. It’s been more than a week without a break, and she still has no teeth. A day of seemingly endless, seemingly pointless pain.
The phone rang, and I thought it was my sister-in-law calling to say she wasn’t able to come over. It was somebody in Victoria – the number started with “03”. As always, I thought, “Is it a publisher?” Except this time it was.
A surprising day!
When she said she was from Text publishing, I knew at once – with the same eerie calm I feel when a motorbike under me slides out of control and I’m going to crash – that I’d done well. Sure enough, I was shortlisted.
An excellent day!
Out of 250 entries, I am in the top three. The winner gets a $10,000 advance and publication. Second and third places get. . . . a warm glowy feeling and a pat on the back. But a 1 in 3 chance is a whole lot better than the usual 1 in 10,000.
A hopeful day!
The details are here.
The winner is announced at the party tonight (Tuesday 17th) – and yes, I’ll be there. (I feel much better now, thank you :P)
The lady speaks
Louisette has said her first word – Mum. She’s also said Dad, and will presumably continue to use them interchangeably for a while until she gets her primary carers sorted out.
This is her, dressed as the very hungry caterpillar (it’s on the label and everything) while eating “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. Talk about product placement.
