In the "brag to everyone you know" spirit of NaNo, I thought I'd share this year's plans with you all.

I've not been writing much for the past year and, as such, I'm horribly out of practice just putting words on the page. When I do sit down to write, I'm usually writing only about 200 - 300 words per hour. I will also (hopefully) be moving house during the month of November, and I'll be going into surgery a month later. I know already that there is no way I can try to write a serious novel at a NaNo pace. So I've decided to do my very first truly traditional NaNoWriMo.

( Here are my plans: )

Some of you may have noticed my posts on FaceBook and Twitter about my getting complex news from the doctor. Here's the whole story, for those who want to know more - behind a cut, since it's very long and a bit TMI and not everyone may want the details. :)

( Read more... )

On my mum's advice, I've started to keep a pain journal - actually, I'm tracking the symptoms of all of my health problems, but a semi-objective record of my pain is a big part of this. When I was at a doctor's office last year I saw a great chart that had very clear descriptions and I wanted something like that to use. So I did some research on the internet and finally found a couple and put them together into my own chart. Here it is - Helga's Pain Scale, with thanks to Belle Browne and Andrea Mankoski:

( Helga's Pain Scale )

My normal daily pain is a 4, sometimes a 5. When I'm having a flare-up, it can get up to a 7. Menstrual pain, when it gets bad, is an 8 with spikes of 9. (And that's when I'm already taking pain pills. I'm way too much of a wimp to try it without. O.o)

I've not been online much in recent months; I've not even been updating my Twitter or FaceBook, which I'm usually pretty good about.  For a long time I had nothing really positive to say and whinging on and on about how broke we were and how worried I was didn't seem like something I wanted to subject anyone else to.  :)  Things are better - we're not losing our house, we're starting to get caught up on bills, we're eating something other than ramen - but things aren't great yet, and I'm mostly focussed, still, on trying to get my life back under control.

The other bad news we got is that one of our goats, Ash, has developed abscesses along his jaw.  We don't know for sure, yet, but it looks a lot like Caseous Lymphadentis, a really nasty disease that's highly contageous - to other forms of livestock, too, and humans - incurable, potentially fatal and can live in the soil for months or years.  We've been waiting for the money to send blood samples off to a testing lab, which we should be able to do this Friday.  If they all come back positive we may have to cull our entire herd.

Good news has been coming in, though, and in larger doses that it has for months.  We were able to make it to the Ostara gathering (with a dog, three goats and five chickens in tow) and see our kindred and friends, which I was immensely grateful for.  R--- is a great housemate and found the perfect job for him.  We've gone off-roading in the desert in his Jeep, which was a blast.  Our dog has finally been neutered and is a thousand times easier to live with.  We get gaming weekends whenever M--- has a Saturday or Sunday off.  I upgraded my phone and now have the ability to take pictures and video with it, so as soon as I figure out how to edit and convert .3g2 files I'll have videos to share.  I just found out that one of my stories - my "fun" writing, nothing publishable - has been translated into Italian, which was a huge thrill.  I've been trying a new technique with my writing, when I've the energy to be creative, which seems to be working well.  We're not going to have to rent out the spare room, so I can - finally - get my office set back up again.  I had a great weekend - lunch with my friend Sh---- in Genoa and a party at the neighbour's, which was a lot of fun and where I got to meet some great people and get to know some others better.

At my mum's request, here are some pictures of my milking stool.  I bought the stool at Michael's shortly after we moved up here, in the hopes that eventually I'd have a milk goat to use it with.  It's sat in my dining room ever since, waiting for me to finish it, and with only a week before Hazel was due to have her kids I decided I'd better get it done.  :)

I drew the knotwork myself, with a little help from the computer and a book on how to construct knotwork.  The centre design is our farm's logo - a bindrune of Thurisaz, Hagalaz and Fehu, the initials of our farm name (Thrudsheim Farm).  On the outside edge of the stool I used runes to write out a quote from the Havamal - "Though but two goats thine, and a thatched hut, 'tis far better than beg."  Once I'd burned the design I oiled the top and then painted the bottom and sides with dark green paint to seal it against the damp ground.  M--- thinks I'm crazy to drag it out to the goat pen and get it dirty, but I'm glad to have something beautiful to use when I milk.

The milking stool.
A close-up of the woodburning.
A side view, showing the painted legs and the runic quote.

Hazel had her kids this morning, February 18th, 2009, between 10 or 10:30.  I was able to be there while she gave birth, but thankfully only had to watch - she did just fine on her own.  :)  We have two, a boy and a girl, both black with white and tan accents - they look almost exactly like Hazel, in fact. We've named the buckling Walnut and the doeling Cypress (keeping with our theme of tree names). The buckling was first born. I've no way to weigh them (milk scale should be here within a few days, but that's of no use to me right now!) but a quick-and-dirty measurement of Walnut says 14 inches high at the shoulder and 17 inches long. Cypress might be a tad smaller. Both kids are standing and taking the bottle fine and Hazel stood still for me to milk her out, so I've a quart of colostrum in the fridge.  Best of all, everyone's healthy!

Some pictures:
Hazel and her babies right after the birth.
The kids try to stand up.
Walnut, the buckling, about an hour after birth.
A close-up of Walnut's face.
Cypress, the doeling, about an hour after birth.

It's been very busy lately here at Thrudsheim Farm.  Hazel's due to kid any day now and since we've never done this before we lacked just about everything we needed.  After two weeks of furious research and shopping, I think we finally have everything we need for kidding  on hand and everything we need for milking on order.  Gods know we couldn't really afford it and I'm already panicking about how we're going to meet our other financial responsibilities this month, but we had to get this stuff and birth doesn't wait for anybody's budget.  We got new chicks - 17, in fact - because we know enough people interested in buying farm eggs from us that we need to start producing a surplus.  I'm excited and terrified about the imminent kidding and already tired of waiting.  :)

Now, pictures!

( Scenery! )

( Goats! )

( Chickens! )

More pictures once the kids are born, of course!

Photo post!

In captioning these photos I actually sat down and calculated when Hazel (my doe) is due to kid. I'd been estimating for months and I thought she was due, oh, some time around early March. Wrong! She's due February 19th - only seventeen days from today! *panics* I'm SO not ready.

But that aside, here are some pictures I took today of our livestock!

( Goat! )

( Chickens! )

( Dog! )

(Edited for linkage fail.)

So, in my last post I may have been a little too optimistic about my likelihood of staying in touch. I haven't been back to LJ since. Frankly, we're running on the ragged edge of ruin, financially, and it's taking all my energy and attention. I won't go into boring details here, but being really, really broke takes a lot of time. I want to try to stay in touch but can't make any promises.
( But I've not disappeared from the internet entirely! )
Anyway, I thought it was better to let everyone know the situation rather than disappearing into silence again. Hope things are going well for everyone else!

Wow, that's a hell of a gap. Anyway, I haven't been on LJ in ages (though I hadn't realised it had been quite that long...) and I doubt I'm going to be sifting through 6 months worth of stuff, so if there were any major updates on your LJ lately email me or assume I didn't get them. :)

Let's see....

I'm now giving private lessons in classical guitar and hope to make something of an income from it. I'm starting a new job retrieving human remains for the local funeral home. I didn't win NaNoWriMo this year, though I had some major breakthroughs in my writing. I'm getting over pneumonia at the moment. Ch------- moved out, first to Sparks and then to Phoenix. R--- hasn't yet moved in. We have three purebred Anglo-Nubian goats, one of whom we hope will be having kids in early March. Lady Zany Wobbly-Gobbets, our turkey, died from a dog bite that went septic. We have a new puppy, a Rottweiler named Modhi. Um, it snowed here today.

I think that's most of the major update-type stuff. I'm going to try not to wander off again real soon and should be checking in with my friends' page pretty frequently, even if I don't post.

I just worked 31 hours in a row.

But I made my deadline!

Huzzah?

*flop*

...Which sounds like an awful 70s camp activity, I admit. :)

The reminder bracelet I made yesterday was fast and easy and fun, and I liked the result, so I did another project today. This one is a necklace for my friend Christina. I used large glass beads (nothing special about them except that she likes purple) and hemp cording for the macrame. As a closure I just made a knot-and-loop clasp with the hemp itself.

I actually made time to do some crafts, today. It's been ages. I did some beading, and it wasn't anything very complex or special, just some repairs I've had on the back burner for awhile and a bracelet I got the idea for on Wednesday night.

( Images behind the cut )

Though I've moved my writing blog to Blogspot, there's no way to password protect material over there. So as I blog my attempt at organised novel planning, I will be posting all my writing exercises, excerpts, plot summaries, etc. over here, under a filter. If you'd like to be on that filter, comment here and I'll add you.

Oh, and I'm alive. Just really busy. :)

I just got a ticket for not yet having a Nevada driver's license - which, yes, my bad, I knew I needed to do it and I've just been stalling. But the reason I got pulled over?

I was going 5 miles under the speed limit and, apparently, driving too far to the right. On an empty highway with a 6'+ paved shoulder plus a 15-20' gravel shoulder beyond that. I may have been riding the line (though it didn't look like it to me) but I didn't even hit the "O HAI YUR DRIVING OFF THE ROAD NOW" texture they put on just outside the line. Apparently, the patrolman thought I was drunk.

Why, yes. This is good incentive for me to be a good driver, not speed and not crowd other cars! I guess from now on I'll just go 70 and hug the center line.

First, I'm not dead. :) I got the job I mentioned in my last post - and it even comes with a pay rise (yay!), we finally got goats (pictures soon in an upcoming post), I've been down with a cold off and on, and life's been pretty hectic. I'm hoping to start catching up with things soon.

I may have a new job. *crosses fingers* One that would allow me to keep working from home with flexible hours, continue writing and allow me to do the freelance web work I'm hoping for. It would be working for my godfather, who I worked for two years ago before his company got bought out by my current company. I would be doing the same software configuration and web design/maintenance I've been doing.

I've sent off the email letting him know that I'm interested and available. It may be time to do a luck and prosperity blot.

Good thoughts are appreciated.

I'm having a rather awful week and am indulging in some spurious moaning. I've cut to spare your sanity. Really. Don't click.

( Cut for excessive whinging )

/whinging

Well, venting helped, which I suppose is the point. If I can just stop feeling so overwhelmed, I can find a way to deal with everything else. My friend and fellow writer E--, who is a Buddhist, has been talking lately about how she's been chanting to find ways to solve the "impossible" problems in her life, and how she's already made huge strides in some areas where she'd almost given up hope. I think the reminder to include meditation and prayer in my life is timely. I tend to try to be too self-reliant and forget about my spiritual resources, but asking the gods for the strength and inspiration to solve my dilemmas probably isn't shirking my responsibility.

I filed for Unemployment today. Based on talking to them it should be a fairly straightforward case and my checks should be enough to live on - albeit barely. I am now officially in the ranks of the unemployed.

And do you realise how hard it is to be morose and depressed about losing your job when you have awesome friends? I've had two people already mention possible opportunities at businesses they know, and I have four proposals to write - one for software configuration and three for web design. Maybe I should consider being a freelance web designer for a bit while I finish my book. :)