hmmm ... seems that marriage by proxy is alive and well in ... Montana?

Steph, any advances on the anxious pooch front?

Bonny, I bookmarked your post in Natter, and I need to get The Boy to sit down and read it. Once he does, may I e-mail you with further questions?

Of course.

Happy to help if I can.

Ugh.

Headache.

Insomnia Fairy struck again last night. And it was really ridiculous. You see, I had two nights in a row of bad sleep last week, both stress-induced. The first was over a work thing, as I sat up into the night trying to figure out how I was going to reply to a particular email, and then woke up an hour before my alarm and carried on worrying. The second was Tuesday, when, in the midst of my electoral angst as a committed Obama supporter, I accidentally stumbled across a particularly gloaty pro-Hillary tauntfest right around midnight. It sent me into such a spitting rage that I--you guessed it--sat up into the night stewing in my anger.

It took me three nights to catch up on my sleep enough that I could write, and as a result I only wrote 17 pages on my WIP last week instead of my current official weekly target, 25. 25 was chosen because it's a push, but it's do-able, and it puts me on pace to finish my draft by the end of June, which in turn should give me time to polish it and have a finished version to my agent by Labor Day. I feel like I'm a very slow writer and it's been too damn long since I've had a manuscript out in the world seeking its fortune, so I'm in full pushy legalistic perfectionist mode on this. (Which, I know, is not a good thing. OTOH, I don't seem to function well if I don't set myself goals at all.)

So this weekend I gave myself a stern talking-to: I can't afford to let work stress or my candidate's fate derail my writing, because writing is my love, writing is my dream. I have relaxation exercises and mental tricks, so from now on I must use them. I'm not going to get less busy, my life isn't going to get any easier, but the worst thing I can imagine is giving up writing or even slacking off on writing, so it's time to woman up and get the job done. Etc.

And then last night I couldn't sleep. This time it wasn't stress. I think it was just time change combined with, not quite a leg cramp, but some sort of sore muscle thingy where I couldn't find a comfortable position for my left leg no matter how I tossed and turned. And I was OK with it until I got on the following mental loop: "When this happened last week, you blew your writing goals. You can do that every once in awhile, but not week in and week out. If you don't get to sleep soon you're going to lose another few days of writing, and just when it was really starting to flow well. Stop doing this. You've got to write. You'll never be an author if you don't write. You need to sleep..."

I finally drifted off between 1:30 and 2:00. I don't know if meta is the right word for this particular battle with the Insomnia Fairy, because we've established that words don't come to me as readily on less than 5 hours of sleep, but it's something unpleasant....

Sorry to skip and meme, but I wanted to let you know that Byron's lab results were inconclusive, but cancer is a possibility. I'm taking him in for bloodwork tonight, and we're going to schedule him for surgery either later this week or early next week. I'm not sure if I will be coming to Seattle this weekend, after all. I'll know more tomorrow.

Kitty~ma

Stephanie, that's INSANE. I am so sorry.

Oh, Kristin. Honey, hang in there.

So much ~ma for Byron. {{{Kristin}}} If you're going to be around this weekend, Friday still stands as an option...

Oh Kristin, sweetie. I am so sorry, and am keeping my fingers crossed for you and Byron. Call me if you need to.

{{{Kristin}}}