cafenowhere

We started the week at a disadvantage. On Sunday, the garage door spring broke, trapping our car inside the garage. We had to have someone from the garage door company come out on Monday, and fortunately they were able to fix the spring, so the door is again operational. We were prepared for them to say the door was a goner and they could only release the car. We are going to replace the motor for the garage door once they can get us scheduled. J says it should be more reliable during the winter and quieter too. I hope a new motor also means the whole house will no longer shake when the garage opens and closes.

On Wednesday, José gave a talk for the city's Office of Equity and Human Rights titled "Stepping Back Before Stepping In: Preparing for Conversations in a Modern World." He discussed sharing pronouns as part of introducing oneself, the importance of pronouncing people's names correctly, how to avoid microaggressions, using inclusive language, and making accommodations. I think he did a really good job. He introduced resources I'd never encountered before (and I'm beyond Inclusivity-101) and spoke from his own personal experience.

For example, he related how, as a child he was in a class with another child named José Jiménez and the teacher asked if he had a nickname she could use. Being young enough not to know the word "nickname" he said no--and ended up being called Panchito (meaning Little Frank). Out of desperation, because José Jiménez is a very common name, he resorted to using JJ as his name for the next thirty-some years. It was only when we collaborated on a poem and he used his proper name in the byline that anything changed. A very thoughtful editor inquired if he used an accent on the e in José and the question eventually led him to reclaim his name, accents and all.

In the evenings we have been watching two shows on Netflix, one a Korean time-travel series called "Sisyphus" and the other a Turkish series called "Hot Skull." The Turkish series is more interesting to me, as it has a very similar storyline to one of my favorite horror movies, Pontypool. In "Hot Skull," a semantic virus causes a pandemic of "jabberers," people who can speak nothing but nonsense. Mostly it's syntactical but it's still nonsense. Listening to the jabberers is a little like how I feel after a long day of reading poetry. I feel like I'm on the verge of understanding but my brain can't make that last connection. The reluctant protagonist of "Hot Skull" has these beautiful moments of surreal whimsy that save the show from being too somber but it's definitely a pandemic dystopia.

Work-wise, I'm still winnowing down the Strange Horizons poetry submissions I received in January. And I keep chugging away at the novel. On a good day, I produce 800 to 1000 words. Obviously, they can't all be good days, so I'm having to be patient with my characters and myself. I'm nearing 30K, which should be about a third of the way through.

Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend? Or for Valentine's Day?

I got up early this morning for a neurology appointment but when I checked in, all the computers in the doctor's office were down. The receptionist had tried to call me, but my phone was set to Do Not Disturb because I am not a morning person. They have to wait until the computers are back up before they can even reschedule. It's kinda funny to me, because my exams at these appointments are so primitive. It's all "Stick out your tongue, follow my fingers, let's check your reflexes, resist when I push on this" etc. No computers necessary. Except they are, for documentation, I suppose. At any rate, I find myself with some extra time this morning. 

My cat has a vet appointment this afternoon. I hope he actually gets to see a doctor.

On Wednesday, I took the day off from my novel. I wrote a book review that I'll post on Patreon today and I went to lunch with friend. After lunch, my friend and I went secondhand shopping. I found some neat sugar skull-themed fabric that I can use for next year's Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. I also got a book titled My Lobotomy, A Memoir by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. That should be interesting.

Yesterday I put in another 1K words on the novel, and it wasn't painful, probably because I spent some time adding sensory details to previous scenes. Scenes don't feel real to me unless they're filtered through someone's senses. The way this book is coming to me is through dialogue, but that means in the first pass, it's all talking heads. I have to go back and ground the events with details. 

We finally got some snow, but just a dusting that swirls, serpentine, when the wind blows. It also makes the pavement slippery, which we discovered last night when J took me to Barnes and Noble so I could pick out a planner for the new year. It's cold enough that I wanted to hurry into the store, but I had to cling to J and move slowly so as not to slip.

As for the planner, I went with the Designworks Ink Standard Issue Agenda weekly planner in grey. It's bigger than my current Carpe Fucking Diem planner but I wanted something more neutral. No more cussing but no inspirational quotes, either. I'll probably spend some time this weekend transferring important dates and such from the old planner to the new. Exciting.

What are your plans for the weekend?

This has been a good week for me. I got to do a variety of work things, which keeps me on an even keel. I prepared two of the poems that I selected for Strange Horizons for publication on the 5th and 12th. I chose a poem for recommendation on my Patreon and wrote up my essay early, posting it around noon today. And I cracked the 10K word mark on my novel today. This last is not as impressive as it sounds; I had a good number of those words written years ago and I started adding words two weeks ago. But I'm still pleased with the progress.

Our family had a few dinners together, which is less common now than it was last year, when Ash was still in high school. These days he spends most evenings with his friends, so it feels like a treat when he is available to eat with us. J has done a lot of cooking this week, saving us from takeout. We eat way more takeout than we should, just like we used to eat out too much before the pandemic. In fact, tonight J is picking up Indian food.

In the evenings, I have been making slow progress on reading Fantastic Americana, a collection by Josh Rountree from Fairwood Press. Reading these stories is not a struggle, it's all good work that I've enjoyed. It's just that as my novel progresses, it takes up more and more of my mind and I can't concentrate on fiction. (I still read a lot of poetry for my Patreon.) On nights I haven't read, J and I have watched Wednesday on Netflix. It's kind of like a cross between Nancy Drew (girl sleuth) and Sherlock (probably autistic protag). I have some Concerns about the show and how it deals (and doesn't) with race, but I like Jenna Ortega in the role of Wednesday Addams. We've watched all but one episode and Wednesday hasn't smiled once. It's refreshing, in a way. Most shows go out of their way to make the heroine likable, but there's all kinds of stories to be told with an antiheroine.

I don't have any weekend plans, except to get to the post office to mail a package. What about you?