Progress!

One of my writing related goals this year is to enter a story into each quarter of Writer's of the Future. They count their year differently, so technically, I got a story entered in the 2nd quarter just under the March 31st deadline. I did something new with this story. I had written something several years ago for a class. The class demanded no speculative fiction, so it's pretty plain for WotF. But the idea was ripe for a supernatural slant. 

So I got my copy of that story, and I started typing it out into a new document, stopping and changing things when they didn't fit in the new narrative. Fleshing out certain aspects and adding different details. When I got to a stopping point and wasn't sure what to write next, I just looked at my old story and figured out my next line. 

Will it work? I have no idea. It was a fun exercise though. It helped me to kind of feel out the new story using the framework of the old one to get a different experience. It's something I might do again, with stories from that class. 

In fact, it might be an interesting exercise to try and write different genre versions of the same story. That wouldn't necessarily create anything to publish, but could be a lot of fun. 

But the next goal I want to focus on is to make updates to my guidebooks. I intended for those to be updated yearly, but the time has gotten away from me and I really ought to make a few updates on each of them. And more updates after the season, because I know at least one trail in my books got maintenance in September, along the Little Queens River - and it should be getting some more this summer. 

Oh, and I still need to update all the editions of my books with the new About the Author page and the new Other Works page. But at least I did get all of my Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Part 2 copies sent out to a select list of friends and family, signed. Late for Christmas, but just in time for the weather to start being good for hiking - as long as one isn't too high up in the mountains.

Omelet Practice

I made an accidental cooking discovery on Sunday. I've been cooking omelets with a nice, fancy omelet pan for a while now. I've got it down to a science, pretty much. Butter into pan, rub against the sides, heat pan on medium to melt butter, then raise temp and pour in beaten eggs. 

That's how it usually goes, and I usually get a fair amount of egg sticking to the pan. Not so much that I can't do my omelet; just enough that it makes cleaning the pan between omelets a pain. This time, I got distracted between when I turned the heat up and when I poured the eggs in. Therefore the pan was hotter than usual when I poured the eggs in. 

Turns out, that's a good thing. There was almost no egg stuck to the pan when I rolled that bad boy out. 

Bacon, pepper cheddar cheese, and guacamole omelet for my husband. 

Just to be sure, I did my omelet the same old way, and, sure enough, the egg stuck to the pan like usual. Next time, I'm going to do the higher heat trick with both and see if I can get to the nearly non-stick perfection on purpose. 

Waste Not, Want Shot

While the place where I work does involve a good deal of interaction with people, or it can, it is not considered essential enough to be in the early roll out groups for the Covid-19 vaccine in my state. However, there is a vaccination clinic on site at my work, and because I do physically come into work 3 days out of 5 each week, I got onto a wait list. 

I thought the wait list would just mean that when my eligibility group came up, whenever that may be, that I'd be in line for an appointment on site. Nope. Turns out the wait list I was on was one of those where if they have extra does that need to be used within a certain time frame, they'd call me and ask if I'd like one. 

It was funny, because I actually missed the first call and called back. They told me that since I hadn't answered the phone, they would have continued down the list and I had missed my chance. But I told my husband about it, and he said, well, whenever they call, you just go. 

They called back right after he said that. Someone else didn't pick up, and since I'd already indicated I was near my phone by calling back, I was offered a chance to get the vaccine. 

And I took that opportunity. 

I'll take it as the universe co-signing my decision that as I drove to the appointment, the radio played The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)", which features, in the chorus, the line "Give it to me, baby." 

There's a part of me that wants to feel bad that I might be taking a vaccine out of the arm of someone more deserving vis-à-vis eligibility groups, but I don't think that part of me has really thought things through. If this dose didn't make its way into my arm, then either someone else whose group isn't up yet would get it, or, much worse, NO ONE would get it. Far better to get it into a ready and willing arm than to throw it away. 

I've got a second appointment set four weeks from the first, and I'm really stoked that I was able to get it. My husband's age will put him in an eligible group as of Monday, so we're getting close to having a vaccinated household. Well, closer than we were, at least. 

Just Relaxative

I feel shame at the idea of taking laxatives. Laxatives are "gross" and "yucky" and taken by bulimics and I'm not that. I'm not gross or yucky and I certainly don't have an eating disorder, as my gastro was happy to write in my chart that I'm overweight and therefore can't be sick. 

Ahem. That's why I resisted taking them for so long. Along with a convenient belief that taking laxatives regularly can make you dependent on them. That, apparently, is NOT a thing. At least, not for folks already diagnosed with IBS. After all, my bowels are already "lazy". If I'm already constipated all the time, I don't see how laxatives could break me more. 

Which leaves me with only the flimsy "gross" excuse. But what is worse? Feeling like I'm gross for taking laxatives or being in constant pain from constipation? 

Turns out, being in constant constipation pain is worse than taking laxatives regularly to prevent such pains. Shocking!

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what dosage will help me stay comfortable and flowing. One per day of a softener helped, but I felt like I could use more help. So, I tried two a day, spaced out. One in the morning and one before bed. 

But I'm not liking how that's working. Or rather, it doesn't appear to be working the way I was hoping. So I'll be changing things up to try two doses at night, together, and see if that makes me feel better. 

I'm trying to avoid the stimulant laxatives on a regular basis, because they can work almost too well. I actually took one of those when I first started this experiment and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night with an urgent need to visit the bathroom, and stay there, for several hours. I'd rather keep things less stimulated than that. 

If the softeners don't work sufficiently, maybe I'll try the stimulant route, but I'm not there yet. The main thing is that I'm now working on trying to get my bowels to be happy bowels instead of bloated, constipated bowels. 

The other aspect I'm working on with my IBS is diet. For a long time, I tried various diets, from low-fodmap to low fiber, and lately, I've been trying to limit my food to simple foods that I can read all the ingredients for. I'm not saying that I'll avoid ingredients that I can't pronounce or are more than a set number of syllables. No, I'm trying to avoid foods that don't list their ingredients explicitly, on the theory that those unnamed additives could be contributing to my issues, and how can I know what affects me if I don't know what is in what I eat? 

Therefore, if an ingredient list includes such phrases as "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors", I'm either avoiding it or making it a very rare part of my diet. Since there's no way for me to know what those ingredients are, or if they change, it just makes sense to me that I should avoid them while I'm trying to reach an equilibrium with my IBS. A state where I can, with some vigilance, mostly forget that I have it. 

Book Published!

That took longer than I would have preferred. But I did finally push the publish button on the large print edition of the 10th (10th!) Hike with Me book. There are still a few more tasks to be completed on this. Three more editions to produce and publish, but no more proofreading to be done. 

In years past, I would be very careful not to make too many changes when I proofread. Once the pictures are placed, it can be a pain to add or remove even a single word, because every full page picture after that change will have to be shifted. I was being lazy, frankly, by not allowing myself to look at the final read through with a more critical eye. 

This time, I read my work and thought about clarity and meaning. I cut quite a few words that felt extraneous. I rephrased a few things when I read them again and realized that while I knew what I was saying, it really wasn't clearly spelled out for anyone else to know exactly what I was saying. Some of those spots, Ambrose pointed out, but not all of them. 

I tried to approach this read through with a bit of detachment. Detachment, but also affection. As if I were reading something that a friend had written, and I was helping them prepare it for publication. Because I would be much nicer to a friend than I would be to myself. Isn't that silly? But it worked. I feel very good about this book. 

It was a short trip, and so it's a short book. But not my shortest. I hope you check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XNVDG8P/