No Writing Planned Today

I don't plan on doing any writing today. I'm going to focus on other matters. My brain needs a vacation.

No real solid plans. I just intend to let my mind relax and follow it's own pursuits. I woke up early, around 2:30, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I finally just came out and did a load of dishes.

Not a lot else to report at the moment. Just puttering around the house, waiting for the kids to wake up so I can do my part to get them off to school. I may post again today, just to report on my progress at not writing, or whatever. Or if I surprise myself and do something despite myself. It could happen.

On another note, I'm trying to figure out what to do about the back yard in regards to the party on my birthday. I've already got a bunch of LED lightwands on order for the kids to chase each other around with. Just trying to figure out how to make it as kid friendly as possible. A lot of our grass died back there during the drought . . . and due to a swimming pool being placed in one location too long. It's kind of shabby looking back there.

Snippet.

(making a little progress today)

Fortunately, the rocking subsided almost at once, and she dared to raise her head and look out.
“Paul?’
Her husband stood sputtering, chest deep in brown water and covered with mud and wet leaves that had been floating on the slow moving surface. He looked like some B movie swamp monster.
“Pfft! . . .pfft! . . .Oh crap, I forgot how bad creek water can taste. This stuff is foul! I think every catfish in south Texas must have pissed in it.”
Once again, she found herself giggling as Paul presented another memorable scene for the record books. She could already picture the look of long suffering on his face as she regaled all their friends back home with his acrobatics. Fortunately, he acknowledged his own lack of coordination and she knew he would be a good sport about it. She grinned at him affectionately, but then the laughter died in her throat as she followed his furrowed gaze over to where the paddle still protruded from the water.
The top foot of it stuck straight up from the surface.
Something about the way it stood there, defiant against the slow current, raised the hair on the back of her neck. As high as the water came on her husband, the paddle shouldn’t have been sticking out at all.
“Paul? What’s happening? How is it doing that?”
She leaned forward to see better as the boat continued is snail like drift downstream.
“I’m not sure,” He eyed the paddle suspiciously, “but I intend to find out.

A Ray of Sunlight

I actually managed to write a couple of paragraphs last night. Not a big amount, but I'm hoping it's a crack in the dam. I need to get this story moving along again, so I can finish it and move on.

Today I start my low carb diet. Lots and lots of chicken, to keep the fat content down. Maybe this will widen the cracks in that aforementioned dam.

I returned the snake to the rental place this morning, since it totally slipped my fogged brain yesterday. See? I have to do something about this. It's really that bad.

When I dropped Sheridan off at school, I told him I wanted him to have a good day. He looked at me quizzically and replied, "That means you don't want me to get poked in the eye, right Dad?" I assured him that not getting poked in the eye was an important part of having a good day, and he seemed satisfied with that answer. Sometimes I don't understand kids.

Later today I'll look around into getting some more glasses. Another thing I've been meaning to do for over a week, but keep forgetting once I drop the kids off. Ugh.

UPDATE: I found a coupon for Eyemaster . . . buy one get one free . . . but I'll have to go to Deerbrook Mall to use it. I'll wait till Friday, when Karla is home to get Rowan off of the bus, and use it then.

Okay, I Want My Brain Back

It's official. I'm in brain fog. I stared at the story I'm working on for almost an hour, and added two sentences. While surfing the net, I intended to go to a web page via another that's on my list of bookmarks, and twice in a row I got distracted once I got to my bookmarked page and went elsewhere instead.

So Tuesday, after allowing myself to indulge in Monday Night Football goodness, I'm going to go on a strict diet to try and kick my brain out of this fog. No gluten products, milk products, and low on the carbs. Nothing but coffee or tea if eating out, to avoid any chance of cross contamination. Lots of chicken, garlic salt, greens, ground turkey, etc. Two weeks of that should show some results if gluten is the problem. I'll also get back on the Omega 3's.

A friend cued me in to supplements called nootronics. Basically brain boosting stuff. I'll do some research on that too. I need every edge I can get.

Weekend Part 2

Went to see "Pandorum" at the movie theatre last night, after the kids went to bed. As scifi/horror goes, it's okay. It borrows it's setting of a "haunted house in space" pretty heavily from Alien, but then a lot do. Another ridiculously big ship with huge, dark, air expensive areas and tight tunnels. All the walls are dark metal, and dim grid covered lights barely illuminate the pipe stuffed hallways. It was cool when Alien did it the first time, but it's really been over-copied since then.

If I ever write a scifi, I will be sure and address that issue.

My creek story is still stalled, although I did have company today and then took a nap after they left. I know roughly what I intend to have happen next, it's just a matter of figuring out the details and writing down the steps of it happening. I'm really beginning to suspect either burnout or gluten contamination. We'll see. I haven't set a date for starting the stricter diet yet. I want to give it a few more days to see if it goes away on it's on.

Sunday is Frito pie day with Sheridan, at least on the weekends when Karla works on Saturday, so I need to do that tomorrow afternoon. They were having some kind of vintage car show in Old Town Spring, so the crowds may be pretty big. Sheridan might like looking at the cars though. Or he may not even differentiate them from the ones he sees all the time. We'll see.

The Weekend Begins

Good morning, Saturday.

Another weekend begins. Oddly enough, I don't get much writing done on weekends. The kids are home from school all day, so I spend more time with them. Then there is usually my Cowboys football game to watch, at least in the fall, but this week they have the Monday Night Game. And of course the weekend is when I usually have any company that is going to visit.

Today, my Dad is visiting to help me snake out a drainage line. I'll need to get the kids dressed here in a minute to go pick up the snake from the rental store. I also installed the new DVD player all by myself last night, despite the doubtful sounds originating from the wife, so I got the weekend off to a good start. Yay, me!

Ah well, time to get busy.

Ugh

Just did a reread of the work I did on the story last night and discovered a glaring POV mistake. The kind of thing that takes a reader right out of the story. How I managed that without catching it at the time is beyond me. POV is one of the things I usually monitor automatically while I write, so this was definitely a case of lack of concentration.

I suppose I'm going to have to do it.

I need to set a date and get ready to start a low carb, high protein diet and be a real stickler about the gluten. If things improve after a couple of weeks of that, then I know what the problem was. It takes a couple of days of preparation and planning to do these things right. I'll have to shop for it, etc.

I suppose I could stand to lose a few pounds anyways =/

The Grain is a Pain

Slightly less than a year ago, we stumbled upon the fact that I was allergic to wheat and gluten. My daughter had to go on a gluten free/casein free diet, and I went on it just because she was on it.

Suddenly I developed the ability to write, my concentration improved, and the chronic fatigue that dogged me off and on all improved. Four months later I had written my first novel. Just like that. It got rejected, mainly because I didn't really know what I was doing yet, but I managed to take what I learned while writing it and used that to be a better short story writer.

Blood tests would later confirm my allergy to wheat and gluten.

So now 11 months after going on the diet, I have nine short stories written, one published, five others accepted for publication, one submitted and awaiting an answer, and two awaiting the proper anthology to submit too. Not bad.

The book "Dangerous Grains" posits the assertion that we all may be allergic to wheat and gluten, to one level or another, because we weren't evolved to eat grain. It's premise is that grain is a recent addition to the diet of a species that evolved to eat meat, nuts and greens. I have no idea as to validity of this theory, not being a scientist myself. I can attest that when I first went on that ancient diet, the results were indeed very noticeable and positive.

I still avoid wheat and gluten, but I'm not as much of a stickler about some things as I used to be. I don't worry as much about cross contamination for instance, such as worrying whether or not a diners french fries were cooked in the same grease as their breaded stuff. The problem is that lately my productivity has fallen off, and I wonder if there is a connection. Of course, I could simply be burning out after having written more than a hundred and thirty thousand words in eleven months. On the other hand, I do find myself staring blankly at the screen more lately. And I have been a little tireder than usual lately.

So I guess I'm going to have to decide whether or not the evidence is strong enough to warrant getting super strict again. Ugh. It's a real pain, and it would cut into some things I do enjoy. I just don't know.

Bleeaargh!

Didn't want to wake up this morning. Too early. Six thirty comes earlier than it used to somehow. Or I'm getting older. Or I'm still muzzy from that wheat yesterday. I can tell that inertia is going to be my enemy today.

Oh well, I did get a load of laundry run yesterday so I have socks and I did accomplish something. Today Rowan doesn't have any therapists, so I actually get to stay home all day. I'll get out that stream of thought story I started and see what I can do with that. I'll be sure and edit in Charlie's suggestion over the cell phone.

It's not a terribly inspired story, but it's what I got at the moment.

On another front, I intend to start shopping for party decorations for next months get together. I want to make this memorable for the kids. I think it will be as much a Halloween party for them as anything else. And I know Karla will look forward to the kubideh . . . a blend of ground lamb, ground beef, and spices. The salmon on a cedar plank is popular in other quarters, and my ribs are pretty popular as well. I just hope it doesn't rain.