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.
Oops/Anti-Oops: My Mirena Side-Effects
So I started writing another book (the first draft is about 10% done, in fact). In my defence, there were extenuating circumstances:
In late May I began using a Mirena IUS contraceptive. I had one very long period at the beginning (a month; not unusual when the Mirena is first placed), then an eight-day but relatively mild period in July. I seemed otherwise side effect free except for quite noticeable depression. The depression was within acceptable bounds (I didn’t feel like harming myself or others) pending further observation (depression and small children don’t mix well).
In late July I suddenly had a laundry list of other Mirena symptoms – cramps, nausea, sensitivity to smells, almost throwing up, difficulty breathing after exercise (only once), headaches, a migraine, blurry vision, dizziness, irritability, no real period (just spotting), sleeping longer and more frequently, anxiety. . .
One thing is immediately obvious about all these symptoms – they’re pregnancy symptoms. I looked up some stats and worked out that quite a few people get pregnant while using the Mirena (and then have a 50% chance of miscarriage because of it – great). Almost 1% of people using the Mirena get pregnant (and it’s often an ectopic pregnancy that can put their fertility and life in danger.)
Long story short, I’ve taken something like a dozen pregnancy tests including two blood tests and even an ultrasound (which confirmed the Mirena was in place despite the fact my GP was unable to remove it) and although it’s still technically possible for me to be pregnant (some pregnancies survive on undetectably low levels of HCG, which is what blood and urine tests are looking for, and the ultrasound might have been too early to see evidence of pregnancy), it’s unlikely. I’m limiting myself to one home pregnancy test a week now. Today’s was negative, of course.
Which is a shame, because CJ and I plan to get pregnant as soon as possible after Louisette is toilet trained (which is only a few months away, and who cares about a few months? It’s the same level of inconvenience as the much more likely wait of several months or years AFTER toilet training as we try to conceive). So I’m in this very frustrating, “Is it a baby? No, don’t be silly….but wait, is it?” stage, while also more and more depressed and irritable and dizzy and headachy.
It’s worth mentioning again: ALL of the above symptoms are documented Mirena symptoms. It pretty much works by telling your body you’re already pregnant, so claims of “I know my own body…I’m pregnant!” are as unreliable as unicorn airways.
I have an appointment with a specialist to have the Mirena removed on Monday 16th September, and if she can’t do it (the strings designed to facilitate removal have curled up out of reach) then I’ll need either a “procedure” (meaning I’d be unconscious at the time) or an operation to get it out. I don’t care about that (unfortunately, the idea of taking a whole day off from minding children – even if it involved getting cut open and/or having a stranger put their hand inside me – sounds wonderful) but I do care about the fact that it’d probably take more long miserable days or weeks to organise.
The depression has sharpened to the point that it’s difficult to keep my temper most days (shockingly, since my entire life is minding one-year olds, this is unhelpful), so I saw three possible options:
1. Go to bed for three weeks, making CJ take all of his sick and annual leave to mind Louisette, and abandoning my carefully-orchestrated work situation (I need to work two days a week in order to do my Cert 3 in Childcare as an apprenticeship, saving $3000).
2. Spend money and eat chocolate like the world is ending – gaining around 10 kilos in the process – which I really can’t afford after the last two years. (The good news is I’ve just lost about 5 kilos, and I’m keeping on going if it kills me.)
3. Write a book – excitement now, and depression later! (The inevitable life cycle of a book is, “This is the best book ever!” –> “This is the worst book ever!” –> “This book is okay. I’ve worked hard and made it as good as I can. Maybe someone will publish it.” –> “Nope. No-one will publish it. Well, that was a largely pointless year of writing effort.”)
So that’s why I started writing a book. Because I’m pregnant sans baby, and it sucks. But it should improve soon.
The book is set in modern-day Canberra, featuring a hidden magical community of three extended families – the Whiteheads can do things with people’s minds; the Strongs can change the physical environment (including flying and making fat disappear), and the Winters see the future.
Ebony is a 16-year old Winter who sees one day ahead, with a strong lean towards fatal events. When she sees a death, she tries to prevent it – and she’s well enough respected that most of the actual saving of lives is delegated to others. But when she sees the death of the royal heir, things get a lot more complicated.
And here (or way above if the formatting doesn’t work) is a pic of Louisette (middle) with two of her cousins.
TBA
Not sure if I’ll be blogging or not. Certainly not regularly. If you’d like to keep getting what I do post, you can subscribe using the RSS feed button on the right, and you’ll get emails when I post things. otherwise, see you in a few years (probably).
To be fair, I’ve tried to quit writing before and it never worked. We’ll see if I can make it stick this time.
One dimension less
This morning I received a note from a publisher comparing my steampunk book to Gail Carringer. All very nice, except the publisher wasn’t meaning it as a compliment exactly – she was explaining that it wasn’t her sort of thing. It so happened that I drew a line in the sand more than a year ago, and the line just got crossed – that was it: the end of any plausible hope for that book, or for any other book I’ve written.
Although it’s perfectly possible I’ll start over in five or ten years, the psychological harm of constant near-misses plus the expenditure of time in a pointless endeavour is now greater than the joy of writing. So, since I believe a writer is someone who writes. . . that’s it. I’m not a writer at this time, and may never be again. In terms of major life goals, I now have only one dimension left: stay at home mum. I like Louisette a lot (who doesn’t?) but a large chunk of my soul just got amputated and thrown away. This is the second time over a decade of my life’s work has been proven to be more harmful than helpful, and it’s right to feel sad before moving on.
My African heritage….no, seriously!
My biological father left when I was very small, and my mum married again when I was two – so “Dad” to me is, unsurprisingly, the man who raised me.
Biodad has been in and out of jail his whole life for various financial scams, so it was no great loss that he vanished out of our lives well before my older brother or I could hope to remember anything about him. I was in my mid-teens before it came up in conversation that he was South African by birth, and had only moved to Australia with his family as a young adult. This was cool because it means I’m half African. (White South African, clearly. . . When I visit Indonesia people ask to take photos of me because they’ve never seen someone so white).
*Abrupt change of topic*
I’m known for my pancakes. My sister used to ask me to make them for her when she visited from Perth, and when I decided to quit all paid work and give writing a full-on go back in 2001 I lived mainly on pancakes (with margarine instead of butter and using powdered milk, one can eat pancakes two or three times a day with lemon and sugar for about $5/week) for several months. It didn’t even put me off pancakes.
At the child care centre where I work, two of our cooks are South African and the main lady in the 1-year olds’ room is from Finland. When my Finnish co-worker talked about how she was looking forward to making cloudberry pancakes on the weekend like she used to do in Finland, one of the cooks talked about how South Africans love to make very thin pancakes, cover them in cinnamon sugar, then roll them up and eat them as the cinnamon sugar melts into a syrup.
It so happens that the pancakes I make are extremely thin – almost see-through – and I like cinnamon sugar on toast enough that I have cinnamon sugar pre-mixed in my cupboard. For the first time ever, I felt I had a connection to the country that gave me half of my DNA. I actually misted up.
Naturally, I celebrate this new-found “family tradition” with pancakes and cinnamon sugar – cooked paper-thin and rolled into a tube to eat. Because that’s what we South Africans do.
Where’s your nose?
Louisette has had this question down for a while, but she still likes to point out noses wherever they may be. Also, she’s just learned about ears, which will be handy for charades shortly.
Can’t write.
Too busy watching the Tour de France. Tonight will be especially epic – mostly flat then Mount Ventoux. It’s common for riders to be delirious when they reach the top due to altitude + fatigue + wind blasting. Enjoy?
