Digestive Health Update

My body has decided to debut some new flavors of pain in the last couple weeks. Usually, I'll get some general gas pains, but I can mitigate them by taking GasX and, to an extent, by slowly rolling around to help the air get out. I've felt something close to this new pain before - when I had stitch-like pain it turned out to be a backup of diarrhea causing the pain. 

But the new pain is only a little like a stitch. It's more like a hot coal temporarily taking the place of an ovary. Or like a really hard pinch that is somehow coming from the inside. It comes and goes, occasionally coming hard enough to stagger me if I'm standing. 

It's annoying during the day, but really hard to deal with at night when I'm trying to sleep. During the day, I can stuff my brain full of distractions. If I'm supposed to be awake, I can push through it. But once I'm supposed to shut down and relax and STOP thinking, the pain takes center stage. 

I like to sleep on my stomach, half curled up, embracing a pillow and nuzzling my husband with my feet. I can sleep on my back or my sides if needed, but they aren't the favored positions. With this pain, a total of 0 of those positions alleviates the pain. Most positions aggravate the abdominal pain, but especially my favorite. So I've been relying on sleep aids, with mixed results. 

These new pains are also, probably, a poop baby. I've been trying to encourage that lump to flow through by drinking a LOT of water (seriously, I drank more than 1.5 GALLONS on Sunday). Usually, a liquid diet or just increased drinking helps my flow. And, since I'm also taking laxatives, the fact that I haven't cleared this is very weird to me. 

My body is very weird to me. 

I wish I understood it better. I wish I knew how to translate the sensations that it gives me. To know when the sensation means I need to rest and when it means I should push harder. When I should drink more water and when I should drink less. 

I have been paying a lot more attention to my body in recent years, trying to troubleshoot my digestive issues and get fit enough for my backpacking goals. And I have learned a lot, especially about some foods that are always bad for me (pineapple, red wine), and how my irregular period actually works. 

I suppose it's nice that there's more to learn. I do like learning. 

Now, if I can just learn how to clear up this current pain. . . 

Omelet Experiment

The last time I made omelets, I didn't have a meat handy. Sure, I could have cooked up some sausage, or maybe even tried experimenting with something like a sardine omelet, but I looked around the kitchen and made a different decision. 

On our kitchen counter, situated so that they can be grabbed while heading out the door, is a box of mini Slim Jims. I mostly don't eat those unless I'm out on a backpacking trip these days, but the first omelet of the morning isn't for me, it's for Ambrose. If I made mine first, I wouldn't want to make another until I'd eaten it! 

So I grabbed a Slim Jim, scored the outer layer and then peeled off the casing. Then I smooshed it up into little pieces. That was the base, but I wanted more. A quick trip to the fridge provided cream cheese and marinated garlic. I mixed up all three in a small bowl and then started on the eggs. 

I've figured out, through trial and error, that my best tactic is to melt the butter on medium heat (so it doesn't burn or brown), and then, when I'm ready to pour the eggs in, I turn the heat up just below the hottest setting and count to 20. THEN I pour in the eggs. The 20 count wait, I've found, makes it so the eggs don't stick to the pan very much at all. 

Once the eggs have been mostly cooked, I add the filling and then cover to allow it to finish cooking and for the heat to melt the cream cheese mix. 

After the omelet finished cooking, I roll it off the pan and onto the plate, then finish with a bit of the Slim Jim, cream cheese, and marinated garlic mix on top. At no point did I tell Ambrose what was in his omelet; I just gave it to him and waited for the reaction. 

Turns out, I make a fine Slim Jim omelet. 

Another Story, What?

It's interesting. The more I focus on writing this nonfiction book that's been percolating in my head for several months now, the more I find myself writing fiction. I mean, I'm not setting any records here, but it feels like it's been a long time since I last had a story demand to fall from my fingers quite like the one on Monday did. 

I'll be saving that story to submit to the next quarter of Writers of the Future. Unless I write more before June 30th. I guess that is a possibility. If that ends up being the case, then I'll decide which to submit at that point. 

I'm not entirely confident that this story mindset will last. Of course, by writing stories, I'm kind of avoiding writing the other book. Maybe that's what I need to do to motivate myself: have multiple projects and procrastinate them off each other. 

But it could also be that opening myself to writing that book is allowing me to be open to other stories floating through my brain. Though, to be fair, this last story felt more like the start of a book than a short story. Or maybe it's the short story prequel to a novel. It kind of feels like I've cracked open the edges of a world, and it's up to me whether I want to crank it open wide and really learn/define it. 

I think that reaching an understanding that I am not a visualizer has helped inform my writing. Helped me understand where I was missing things in my writing; missing that visual description because I don't find visual description to be that important when I read. I don't see the scenes in my head like a TV show, so why would I write in such a way that others would be able to create that? 

I like writing; it's one of the ways that I learn the world and process my own understanding, by creating stories or telling my real life stories or just musing about in a semi-philosophical way. I don't think that I'll ever stop writing, even if I decide to stop actively trying to sell my writing. I do hope that I can someday make a living off of my writing, but I'm not pursuing it strenuously. Slow and steady, keeping the day job, and maybe, with this next book project, doing some actual promotion. 

I will talk myself into this. 

Submitted Another Story

I wasn't sure what I was going to write for the 3rd quarter entry of Writers of the Future that I promised myself I'd do. I've tried to do writing goals before that were more aggressive, and while I can keep up a more aggressive pace, I have other things that I like to do. Plus a day job. So, I haven't been as focused on story creation. 

And, for some reason, I keep coming up with story ideas. And rather than letting them lie, because they're really weird, I've decided to try writing them without concern for how weird they might be. I can't say how good these stories are, but they're written. 

After all, there's no way to determine whether a story is good or not until it is written. When the voices in my head try to keep me from writing a story because it won't be any good, they are arguing from a false premise. A story isn't anything until its written (or told, I'm not knocking oral tradition here). 

Neither is a book. I've been percolating a book for several months now, and while I've written bits and pieces, I haven't really hammered at it. I go back and forth, thinking that it's a good idea and some people might appreciate it, and then thinking it's a stupid, privileged idea and some people might hate it. But the truth of the matter is, it's probably both of those things, and more. Even the most beloved books have 1 star reviews on Amazon, and, well, in order for people to hate it, they'd need to find out about it. So if people hate it, at least that means people know it. 

I'm going to get that book written. And I'm going to publish it. I might even - gasp - promote it, at least to my circles, small as they may be. Because I will not know until I write it how it will be received. If I want to find out - and I do - then I must buckle down and write it. 

Trouble in the Trees

Over the Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I went backpacking in the Sawtooths. Usually, when we hike out this way, we'll see wolf sign, or even wolves, but this time we only saw very old scat and not much of that. 

This led me to mention that I'd read that Idaho would be culling its wolf population from 1500 to 200, and we proceeded to speculate that the wolves must have fled deep into the wilderness to avoid the cull. I was thinking about a dramatized story from the wolves' point of view, about how the packs needed to retreat, but Ambrose took it another direction. He started making a song about it to the tune of Rush's "The Trees" - one of his favorite songs. 

He made some line suggestions, but I will admit I did not consciously retain them in memory. Instead, I let the concept simmer in my brain for a couple days before coming up with this: 

There is unrest in the forest
Stirring deep in Idaho
They say the wolves have grown too many
And so the wolves must go

The trouble to the people

(And they're quite convinced they're right)
Is that the wolves are just too vicious
And have ranchlands in their sight

But the wolves can't help their nature
And they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the ranchers
Can't just build a better stockade

There is trouble in the forest
Since the wolves are marked to die
No creatures can scream oppression
When good folk turns a blind eye

There will be no union
To protect the rights of wolf
We cannot change their nature
And the ranchers have had enough

Now we'll see wolf suppression
All due to human flaw
And the wolves, they will be slaughtered
By poison, gun and law